DevEngage is aimed at departmental developers who want to automate routine tasks with forms-based apps that enter data to a database.
Created by IBM’s Haifa, Israel development lab, the tool replicates the wizard-based environment of familiar office desktop applications, to help departmental users create forms-based apps for routine tasks. It lets them drag and drop pieces of documents, spreadsheets, or other items onto a canvas or blank area, to create a forms-based workflow. The wizards let the user specify details like application name, behavior, plus its overall look and feel. The user doesn’t have to know any JavaScript.
Once the user has defined the application, it is submitted to the back end hosted service where the underlying code is generated, and then sends the user a url where the online web form is now available.
As this is an attempt to recreate a familiar desktop experience on the web, it’s not surprising that DevEngage makes liberal use of Ajax technologies and programming styles to make the web form interactive and carry some local intelligence.
IBM Development Engagement Service is available as a hosted technology on IBM alphaWorks Services.
