Macromedia: Educational Resource Center Application [via WebWord, March 16, 2002] Sample of how to create accessible sites with Flash. Good example, but of course the real kicker with any development environment is not what is possible, but what is easy. You can create scalable, distributed, secure, accessible, high-availability applications in Visual Basic if you’re smart enough and disciplined enough. But what do we mostly get? Crappy little VB apps thrown together in an afternoon with horrible UI and no security model that lock up the database on every button click. Why do you suppose that is? (Hint: the answer is not “the programmers are idiots.”)
Powerbuilder has the same problem, only more subtle. Powerbuilder encourages inappropriate database denormalization because the datawindow (the main “data-aware” grid control) doesn’t support multi-table updates. Yeah, you can do it with the PFC, but it’s hellishly difficult and nobody bothers. The minute you need a grid that displays data that logically ought to be stored in different tables but needs to be updated from the same screen, boom, the developers force the DBA to denormalize the tables to make their lives easier. Bah.
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