The Free Stuff You Get From {Gr|R}ails

I'm learning Grails (before that it was Rails). Up until recently, I've been really impressed by what these frameworks give you "for free": ORM, pages for performing CRUD operations on the data, one or more application servers, etc.

But as I consider the usability of the software that these frameworks give you for free, I start wondering if some of this free stuff is worth it.

The more practical side of me has been confronting the side of me that was initially so giddy over the power and RAD-ness offered by these frameworks.

Here's one recent exchange between my practical side and my giddy side...

Giddy Tim: So with just a few commands and some editing of a Customer.rb (or .groovy), I can show users a page that lists every Customer in the database!

Practical Tim: What kind of user wants to see every Customer in the database? Sure if you're interested in one of the first Customers in the list, you might be happy with the list but what about every one else? Everyone else has to some how get to the Customer they're interested in. What your users probably want is a search feature so that they can search for a particular Customer. They probably would like a list of the Customers that they deal with the most, you know, their favorites. Or maybe they want to narrow the field by listing all Customers in a particular Category.

Giddy Tim: You've got some good points there. At least I have an edit page that shows the Customer and a place where I can briefly list, but not edit or view the details of, the Customer's Orders.

Practical Tim: So you have to go to another screen to edit or view the Orders?

Giddy Tim: Yes, at least one screen. There's the "View Order" page, then I click the "Edit" link and I'm taken to the "Edit Order" page. Then when I'm done editing, I click "Save" and then I'm redirected to the "View Order" Page again. Then, if I customize the Controller, I can have it redirect me back to the "Edit Customer" Page of the Customer whose Order I wanted to edit. Even though the system knows that there is a one to many relationship between Customers and Orders there is still a one to one relationship when it comes to pages. Each "Edit" page edits a single record in the database. Simple, eh?

Practical Tim: With a powerful JavaScript library and Ajax couldn't you easily allow the user to edit Customers and their Orders all from the same page? That seems like a better user experience to me. Alan Cooper in his book "About Face" says that it's a good idea to allow users to edit data where it's displayed. It sounds like these frameworks create an unnecessary distance between editing and viewing, and part/whole relationships.

Giddy Tim: So to offer the users a good user experience, it sounds like I'll need to modify the automatically generated code extensively.

Practical Tim: Yep, see you around Giddy Tim!

Giddy Tim: Uh, just call me Tim.

I will continue to use Grails, and Rails, and maybe even Merb, but I will use them with open eyes knowing that once the frameworks have generated code for me, I've probably still got a lot of work ahead of me.

P.S. I'm sure that the code generation engines can be improved to generate more usable interfaces (although they may need some hints and guidance from the programmers).