how big and complex are the applications people are making with dreamweaver?

[hconnorjr]

i'm not trying to be tongue and cheek here, but someone recently explained to me that i can't use this for building a serious internet application because it the code it generates is poor and the application will run slowly. he seems like a smart guy but i'd like someone else's opinion. i may build with the mx kollection anyway, just as a backup. all suggestions appreciated.

my database will probably have at least 20k records and will combine 4-6 tables with about 50 total fields. using php/mysql.

[Newsgroup_User]

I think your friend has never used Dreamweaver.

I just built an application that accepts uploads of tens of thousands of zip
codes and compares them against a data table of ~22,000 zips to find percent
overlap. It is neither clunky nor slow.

I used PHP/MySQL.

I didn't use MX Kollection.

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"hconnorjr" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:eiq4nd$b67$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> i'm not trying to be tongue and cheek here, but someone recently explained
> to
> me that i can't use this for building a serious internet application
> because it
> the code it generates is poor and the application will run slowly. he
> seems
> like a smart guy but i'd like someone else's opinion. i may build with the
> mx
> kollection anyway, just as a backup. all suggestions appreciated.
>
> my database will probably have at least 20k records and will combine 4-6
> tables with about 50 total fields. using php/mysql.
>

[Newsgroup_User]

I've built "plenty large" applications using DW and it's certainly up to the
task.

Code generation is a near-religious subject, and everyone has their opinions
regarding how code should be formatted, what's the most efficient, etc.
It's all a matter of how he/she learned. I personally find DW's code to be
well formatted for the server model I'm most familiar with (Classic ASP) and
easy to read and follow. But it does tend to be more verbose than methods
learned by the traditional hand-coder. It's that verbosity, however, that
helped me understand the language better while I was learning it.

DW is a pretty good example of a rapid application development (RAD) tool.
And it supports a lot of different server models. In order to meet this
need, the application shares a lot of "parts" between the supported server
models, and the code that it generates will be similar between those models.
For me, this makes it a bit easier to switch between server models because
you can half-way predict how DW is going to format the code blocks. However
this also generates a fair amount of code that some folks oppose (as you've
noted).

There's almost always a better way to write server-side code for any given
application, and lots of people have varying opinions on how that should be
accomplished. A dedicated tool for any given server model may likely write
more efficient code that what DW will provide (VS.NET for .NET, for
example). But then again, that dedicated tool is probably only good for
that representative server model and no others.

So, to make a long story longer... I think DW is fine for larger
applications if you take into account that the amount of generated code may
be a bit higher. If your primary concern is application speed and you're
fluent and highly advanced in the technology you're developing with, you're
probably using a different tool already anyway for the server-side
development of your application and using DW as the web front-end design
tool.

Best regards,
Chris

[Newsgroup_User]

The programmer matters more than the development environment.
If it makes you feel any better, 20K rows in a handful of tables is a small
database, so you can probably use slow, clunky code and still have decent
performance. ;)

"hconnorjr" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:eiq4nd$b67$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> i'm not trying to be tongue and cheek here, but someone recently explained
> to
> me that i can't use this for building a serious internet application
> because it
> the code it generates is poor and the application will run slowly. he
> seems
> like a smart guy but i'd like someone else's opinion. i may build with the
> mx
> kollection anyway, just as a backup. all suggestions appreciated.
>
> my database will probably have at least 20k records and will combine 4-6
> tables with about 50 total fields. using php/mysql.
>

[Newsgroup_User]

but someone recently explained to
> me that i can't use this for building a serious internet application
> because it
> the code it generates is poor and the application will run slowly.

There'a big difference between poor code and verbose code.

Poor code is inefficient and often breaks with poor error trapping and
handling.

DW's code can sometimes be verbose, to handle many different scenarios and
errors which may not be relevant to the project at hand, but it's robust,
scalable and quite efficient.

Hand coding by a skilled programmer will always beat pre-packaged software
generated code. But DW is no slouch with creating quick, reliable,
responsive applications.

--
Regards

John Waller

[hconnorjr · Accepted solution]

thanks for the insights. as a beginner, you don't know what to think when someone says bad things about DW. based on the comments here, i've dived in and have a basic web application already (very basic) . . . but i couldn't have done it without DW, a very robust program. thanks again.