From: Mike Stephens Date: 2011-02-08T02:12:34+09:00 Subject: Re: Choosing an office suite Hi Hilary If you are starting from square one, I would honestly recommend you look at Mendix (see http://www.mendix.com/ ). You don't need to code anything. You draw 'models'. Draw your database as an entity-relationship diagram and you have a working database (choose Oracle, MySQl etc) with professional CSS update etc screens - much more advanced than Rails. Drag and drop your controls. Your micro-logic you do with graphics. It's free to develop but then you would incur costs to deploy - but against that you don't have to cross the even bigger divide ie setting up and configuring your infrastructure. You just get them to host it probably at the press of a button. I don't know what the cost per transaction would be. I'll try and get an idea from a contact I have in the UK, if you're at all interested. Office packages are wonderfully powerful but complex in their own way and not easy to deploy as web apps. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.