Sherpa: Another Code/Layer/Application Generator
I'm not much of a fan of various "Application Generators" software, but
Sherpa seems to be an interesting find. It's allows full application generation but with inherent extensibility (by changing templates, XSLT and other measures)
I haven't gotten the change to use it yet on anything real, but it does seem promising.
The nice thing about these kinds of apps is that they *can* save lots of time when creating standard boilerplate code and such (which
CodeSmith helps with as well, as do other tools), but they can also help with creating full blown simple applications to be customized later.
Yes, there is an architecture-Lock in: Once you have a working app you're bound to use the architecture generated to change stuff, but if you play your cards right and simply enough, you might find that most changes require part of code-regeneration rather than fiddling with unknown APIs too much. Again - there's a thin line between a code generator and application generator. Sherpa seems to provide both abilities: Generate as much as you want, including Data Layer, business layer and I believe a UI layer as well. And it's supposed to do it in a manner which will not make experienced developer cringe at the thought of looking at the code.