Thanks, Keith. I'm going to have to look closely at all of that as I go through the evaluation as it is completely different from the impression I got from all their white-papers and demos. I am very used to developing Fox apps in VFE and have become quite wedded to n-tier design, completely open and extensible source, and unlimited modification of what wizards and builders produce. I was under the impression that what was generated was a standard asp .net app which could be further modified or enhanced in the VS IDE. I am worried about not being able to hack what the generator initially produces or being locked in to only modifying via ISD.

Which version do you use? ( my understanding is the product changed a good deal as of 1.7 )

I am particularly interested in exactly what you mean by "doesn't generate source code" This is really contrary to the impression I was getting from their docs. I guess I'll just have to bang on it for a while. The evaluation contains both versions.

I'll probably be showing up here again in the next 15 days with questions and observations. They are also doing an on-line "webinar" on Thursday that I am going to participate in so that may be a chance for me to get some of this cleared up.


>Charles,
>
>Iron Speed is sort of its own development platform that sits on top of .NET. You give it a normalized database and it generates all of the standard add/edit/delete pages.
>
>Its advantages are:
>
>1. Don't have to write any code to have a working application.
>2. It has a built-in set of XML attribute tags that you can use to customize the generated application.
>
>Disadvantages:
>
>1. Doesn't generate source code unless you buy the expensive version.
>2. Creates only 2-tiered applications (IIS <-> Database Server).
>3. No matter which theme you choose, the generated application looks like a generated application.
>4. Once you start an application with Iron Speed, you are stuck using it for all of the web forms in the application. If you have a web form that you want to create by hand, you have to use the XML attribute tags to coerce Iron Speed into generating approximately what you want.
>
>For me, Iron Speed is a good tool for prototyping evaluation models that my clients can play with. I don't use it to build production applications, however.
>
>>I've just downloaded the evaluation version of Iron Speed Designer 1.7. Does anyone have experience with it or observations and opinions?
>>
>>Comments appreciated. Thanks.