What I want from a web framework with RDMS or does Django do that?

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I have been busy studying the new frameworks like Django (Python) and Ruby on Rails to explore if I should switch to the new bandwagon and see if they will really give me productivity benefits.

Some background before I present my problem issue or what I am missing.
I have developed some production sites using Zope and Tomcat/JSP/Struts . I am a fan of Zope. As a self taught web developer, here are some things I love about Zope. (I do have a programming background from ages ago!)

IMHO the simple , powerful, ready- made management interface provided by ZMI with Zope's inbuilt security admin is really unparalleled in its ease-of-use for first time users. It also sets up easily without much fuss and runs well out of the box! No big configuration hassles! (Zope 3 seems to have succumbed to the complex installation syndrome). Zope is also pretty graceful in the way it handles errors. One struggle much less with constant syntax errors typical in Java and other development languages . Consequently applications develop much faster. As far as templating for web sites goes , ZPT is really amazing!

Now , the reason I am driven to explore the new frameworks is that I use RDBMS in my applications. In the past I have interfaced them to Zope using ODBC. I have found that I tend to write repetitive CRUD operations plus listView , itemView , editView templates for the data stored in tables and write doEdit action handlers. Also typically in parent, child type relationships , the itemView of a parent item , always needs work to show the parent_child information.

While the new frameworks promise to handle RDMS in an elegant OO way.. I am surprised that none of them supply , an out-of-the box listView, itemView, editView for any given RDMS table! is it not easy to extract the structure of a table via SQL commands and generate the views automatically? Not exactly a PHPAdmin view , but a enduser usable view of the tables. Why is this not available?.

In my "ideal world" , I would like to do the following;

  1. Define my RDMS Tables , using an RDMS GUI or Even an CSV export from Excel! (Note. most web apps have relatively simple RDMS structures. simple lists , parent_child lists or MxN relationship tables)
  2. Point my Framework to the table list
  3. Get a First Ready made app that gives me for each of the tables

A Tab Selector for the Tables

A Search Form for the table (after all , one just needs to construct a SELECT!)

A paginated panel of rows with edit/delete/view buttons

An generated Edit Form Panel that gets populated with the selected row

An default item View that shows parent details followed by children

All these then customizable and modifiable by the user later!

Now that would be my Framework ; Of course, with the Zope capablities to manage and upload content through the web inbuilt!

Now having raised the problem , methinks I am going to experiment .. to go about doing just that! Stay tuned! .. Unless of course some one has already done this in Django ..and I could just use an RDMSTableObject as is!

Comments and Help welcome!

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