Product Reviews

For any Web site bigger than a personal home page, flat HTML development is effectively dead. Instead, database-driven Web sites have replaced flat HTML for virtually every application, from e-commerce ventures to publishing.

Although there have long been tools capable of building flat HTML sites, creating database-driven ones has traditionally always involved someone sitting down and writing database queries by hand, using applications like Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP), ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) or Java Server Pages (JSP).

Both Adobe, with GoLive, and Macromedia, with Dreamweaver UltraDev, have attempted to bridge this gap between visual development tools and database code over the past year. Although GoLive effectively had database development tools first through a plug-in for GoLive 4.0, Macromedia made a far larger splash with Dreamweaver UltraDev, a version of Dreamweaver 3.0 that included tools for developing using ASP, CFML, and JSP. Uniquely, UltraDev allowed developers to design pages with live data in place, so designers could get a much better feel for how their pages would look to end users.

In line with the release of Dreamweaver 4.0, the company has now announced UltraDev 4.0, a product that blends all the new tools of the base-level product with a sprinkling of new database-related features. As with Dreamweaver 4.0, UltraDev sports a revamped interface with a split-pane view that lets you see and edit code as you create a page, colour coding and indenting it according to the type of language you're using. You can also use the script editor to edit non-HTML documents, which makes it a viable choice as an authoring environment where you're not developing HTML. As a 'pure' text editor, UltraDev has enough features to satisfy most users, including searches across multiple files, although for advanced search and replace functions you're still better off using BBEdit.

Connecting to live databases has been simplified in this version, as there's now no need to set up ODBC or JDBC drivers on your development machine. As before, you have to set up the machine your database is running on so it can be an ODBC data source, but this is relatively straightforward. Connecting to this is now a simple matter of telling UltraDev which machine the database is on, and the name of the ODBC source; UltraDev does everything else. This answers one of the biggest criticisms of the first version of UltraDev, which required users to type connectivity information into it before it would connect.

Creating links to databases has been improved with a new set of server behaviours available from within UltraDev. Server behaviours allow

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users to add server-side interactivity features without writing code, including common tasks like navigation, showing and hiding regions in a layout, and inserting records. Significantly, these are now much simpler to use - users can easily create their own behaviours using pre-supplied behaviours and adapting them, using the new Server Behavior Builder. Included with UltraDev is a set of behaviours for validating user names and passwords, password-protecting pages within the site.

Of course, UltraDev has all the new features of its sibling, including a code reference based on the definitive O'Reilly guides to DHTML (see www.oreilly.com), customisable keyboard shortcuts, JavaScript debugger and roundtrip graphics editing. However, probably the most significant new feature in both versions is support for WebDAV, one of the leading version control architectures for Web development. Unfortunately, support for SourceSafe isn't confirmed in the Mac version of UltraDev 4.0. Although Dreamweaver has long had its own check in/check out system for managing site production, it has never matched the features available with either of these systems. The addition of access to WebDAV will enhance Dreamweaver's usability in Web development environments.

Macromedia's aim with Dreamweaver UltraDev is clear. Not only is it designed to appeal to designers who want to do some simple database connectivity work, the new split code mode and support for WebDAV makes it a realistic proposition as the tool of choice for everyone in Web development, from designers through HTML coders to database developers. A single application, UltraDev can, the theory goes, now cater to the needs of everyone in a Web development environment.

The advantages of using a single tool are clear enough, as it reduces support costs and allows an entire company to use Dreamweaver tools such as asset management. Of course, if you're already using a wide range of tools it'll be an uphill struggle to persuade everyone to give up those tools, but if you have a commitment to Dreamweaver in part of your company, then rolling out UltraDev to your developers could be relatively painless.

The only real criticism of UltraDev is that, in bolting on database query development tools to a design and layout package, the application is increasingly complex to navigate. It's now possible to have close to 20 palettes open at the same time, although you can keep this clutter to a minimum by using them in their tabbed-palette form. No one is likely to open that many palettes at once, but it gives you an idea of how much there is in Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.0. Given that, if you're a coder, you're likely to use only a handful of the functions available, everything else in UltraDev is clutter.

Overall, UltraDev 4.0 is a real step forward for development of database-driven Web sites. Although it won't eliminate the need for database coders, it allows designers with little database knowledge to do the simple things themselves, while letting coders do the difficult jobs. The first version required a level of database knowledge that was arguably a little too high for much of its target market. UltraDev 4.0 goes a long way to correcting this and delivers a much more usable tool as a result.