Hey guys, a year on and I've learn't...not a lot.  Mainly because I've
really struggled with syntax and finding time.

At work I experience Data Projects to create front ends to SQL Server and
Oracle database's  And it is great because its easy to use, drag and drop
the objects with basic property options for visual effects.  The front ends
are really only used to create a more userfriendly point of contact for the
RDBMS, ie to create sql on the fly and pass it back to RDBMS, or simply
"package up" tasks into drop down combos etc.  Use VBA to manipulate
datasets, but mainly try and create as much stuff to happen on the server.
And for someone with limited object orientated language skills, its great
because you can get by with knowing a bit about loops, ado recordsets and
object properties.

BUT, I've looked at perl, python ie PyQT etc and am still pretty sure that
java is the way on creating nice gui front ends to databases.  Especially
seeing some of the really nice java gui's they use at work from a sofware
vendor.

My RDBMS of choice is PostgreSQL, mainly because it supports transactions,
its fast, it has a huge number of features and in that respect, as well as
ANSI92, follows Oracle very closely, so converting syntax has been easy and
I have a project ready.

Now down to the question, where can I obtain software which will allow be to
create these gui/swing apps using mainly drag n drop, leaving the SQL
properties of a combo / dataset to be coded, but not much else.
I have used eclipse as an IDE, even commercial offerings from
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/index.html
So far the closest I've seen to being able to actually just create a form
with objects in seconds, has come from netbeans 4beata
http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html
I would like to be able to use the usual list box's, combo box's, text box's
and datagrids...

I've realised that I don't learn well by starting at the beginning and
building up, I seem to get on much better by creating big apps relying 95%
on the IDE, then over time seeing how things are done behind the scenes
until after a year its more like 60/40 as I can tweak / add more.

These are some other projects Im looking at, but not really tried, but there
were so many I was hoping someone might know what Im babling on about.  And
if you dont, these links may be of use to you anyway :)

(Atris 'appears' to be the most promising I've seen, followed by dbForms)

http://atrisframework.sourceforge.net/index.html
http://jdbforms.sourceforge.net/
http://swingset.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://xdoclet.sourceforge.net/xdoclet/install.html
http://sql2java.sourceforge.net/
http://db.apache.org/ojb/features.html
http://dataset.sohlman.com/
http://dspro.sourceforge.net/index.html
http://www.ibatis.com/common/sqlmaps.html
http://www.jpox.org/index.jsp
http://boss.bekk.no/boss/middlegen/
http://www.hibernate.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mondrian/
http://qform.sourceforge.net/
http://www.javootoo.com/

Im also at the point where spending out on a commercial product is an option
(ie Credit Card), but Im really hoping people with experience of these
"expensive" solutions will be willing to say what they think on this...

Many Thanks!