IDE for DATABASE apps

[Elico]

Hi

Is there a IDE that is suitable for stand alone desktop database programs building ?

I need an IDE that will offer drag and drop database components into the forms .
something similar to DELPHI or VISUAL STUDIO IDE.

Can you offer ?

Thanks
Elico

[caseih]

I guess it depends on what you're after exactly.

Are you looking for something like MS Access? An integrated solution that includes a database engine with a graphical user interface plus a built-in programming language for doing custom forms and logic? If so, the answer to this is very much no, FB or not, in the open source world. Despite Access' many shortcoming and hammer-like nature, this is a pretty glaring hole in the open source repertoire.

Are you asking if there are any GUI toolkits out there with data-aware (live) UI widgets? There are several projects that appear to be offering such things. For example, the gtk-databind project, or gnome-gda. In theory those could be accessed from FB if someone made a .bi file.

Or are you asking simply about GUI designers and can handle working directly with a database engine like MySQL or SQLite? The way FB is designed such things can be used as utilities but they will never be part of the language itself. Once you're familiar with the various tools, you could, for example, create a nice GUI in Glade, and connect it to a database backend in code.

[Elico]

Thanks

"GUI designers and can handle working directly with a database engine like MySQL or SQLite?"

That can be good , but I want a GUI ide that does not rquire any sql engine planted in the final app .exe file.

Elico

[caseih]

EDIT: I misread your post. No matter what you do you have to have a database engine of some kind in your .exe. How else would you do it? Or connect to an external DB through an API. SQLite is a popular choice for embedding in an application and FB ships with .bi files for it. Can do in-memory tables, or in a file.

A couple of FB users have developed their own GUI toolkits and drag and drop gui designers. You can try to search the forum for more information on that.

One somewhat popular GUI toolkit that some FB developers use is wxwidgets. And someone did make a GUI designer for it.
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18152
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17911

Another toolkit that's popular on Unix and Linux, but also works on Windows is GTK+. I believe the bindings come with the FB package, though you'd have to install GTK+ libraries to use it. As I said, Windows isn't my forte. GTK+ has a GUI designer in the form of Glade (search for it). You either run a program like glade2bas to generate FB source code, or you can dynamically load the XML file at runtime. GTK+ is fairly complex, however. There is a learning curve to it, especially if you want to do a lot of tables. But it's very powerful and flexible.

Another option is FLTK.
https://www.freebasic-portal.de/tutoria ... n-110.html

Not FB, but there is an interesting project called wxBasic:
http://wxbasic.net/

Hopefully someone more experienced than I can pipe up and speak the these options.

[Elico]

Thanks
Elico