RAD with WaveMaker

Yesterday VMware announced they had acquired WaveMaker.  I had not explored WaveMaker, but luckily the news exposed this wonderful development tool for me.  WaveMaker is a tool for Rapid Application Development (RAD) that is perhaps the worlds greatest WYSIWYG editor.  Not just WYSIWYG for HTML or page layout, but it can completely eliminate the need for Java coding and with its integrated data structure mappings with Hibernate it can easily integrate with any enterprise database.  The point is that anyone who is computer capable can write a fully functional web application and maintain it without the need for developer time.  As a bonus, there is integration with the big names in cloud hosting like Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and OpSource

I checked out the example videos and was amazed.  I was especially excited because I of course noted there was a cloud version available.   Of course the site is down for maintenance without any idea as to when service would be restored.  Being an avid user or Chrome OS on my Cr-48 I was extremely bummed.  So I decided to  cheat a little (its still browser based app development, however it required installing software) and I cranked up developer mode on my Cr-48 and entered my Ubuntu Linux boot.  I downloaded WaveMaker and kicked it off.  

Amazing.  I created a test project with one of the provided templates and started dragging objects onto my web page.  Styling is available at the click of a button, and wiring up events to buttons exposes so special handling can be added.  I can already grasp the power of this tool and I have not spent a whole hour in it.  I can imagine in the coming days and weeks as I get the chance to get more familiar with it, I will be even more amazed.  I am also excited for when the cloud.wavemaker.com site is operational again when the true power of being able to code an application in the cloud and even deploy to a cloud host like EC2 without leaving the comfort of the browser.