Traverser 1.0 released, could cut development time

Tom Cleland writes “The Traverser, a free software package that could cut database application development time in half, has just been released. By using a naming convention on foreign keys, users can link together all the tables in a database without programming, allowing developers to concentrate on business rules and other custom modifications.

After specifying fields and indexes, users can navigate from table to table, editing records along the way. Sorts, searches, and lookups (also called drop down lists) are generated automatically. Capabilities include:

* Moving from parent to child tables in an ongoing pattern.
* Filtering child records based on the selected parent.
* Automatically populating lookup drop lists.
* Applying a default sort order within the parent context.
* Sorting and searching on any field, or combination of fields, using the lookup description as well as the identifier.

The Traverser runs using PHP and MySQL.

While relational databases have been around for a long time, the Traverser could be the first application to automatically integrate the parent-child table hierarchy. The benefits are the greatest when a database contains a number of one-to-many and many-to-many table relationships.

“Whether the Traverser is folded into another project, or other projects are folded into the Traverser, this is functionality that all database applications ought to have,” said Tom Cleland, author of the Traverser. “I’m not aware of anything like it in the proprietary realm.”

Project Page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/thetraverser/

Documentation:
http://thetraverser.sourceforge.net/

Download:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou p_id=81650&release_id=161473”