>I mean, why not? If I'm a small business, and I need a custom (in-house) app, AND I could do it myself with little training, I'd rather do that then not have t

>I mean, why not? If I'm a small business, and I need a custom (in-house) app, AND I could do it myself with little training, I'd rather do that then not have the business. The first company I worked for developed such a system and it worked out very well for them. You would write your UI in XML and your business logic as Postgres stored procedures using either PLPGSQL or any number of other languages with Postgres bindings. They then had a C frontend which would parse the XML and render out the UI using either GTK or HTML. It also had the ability to make arbitrary HTTP requests which allowed for some pretty sophisticated integrations. Everything about this felt wrong yet it allowed the company to rapidly deliver new functionality and bespoke customizations, on site and often in a matter of hours. It was also simple to the point they could train others in the business (outside of development) to use it.