[crb]

In what you might loosely term the golden age of the Windows Desktop - lets say 1995 to 2005, - "custom business application", especially within a large company, was generally done on one of these platforms:

  - Excel
  - Visual Basic
  - Lotus Notes
  - Microsoft Access
  - Foxpro

(Your list may vary depending on where you are in the world, etc)

For the company who is modernising their IT, perhaps "moving to the cloud", they have to replace a lot of the functionality that was built on these platforms (especially if the vendor doesn't support them any more, or wants to charge an unviable amount to do so).

What is the modern web equivalent to the "drag and drop programming" paradigm for simple form applications? There are the scaffolding frameworks for proper programming languages (Rails, etc), but they just simplify the process, rather than allowing non-programmers people to design their forms, and then having a little bit of workflow which either they, or their technical colleagues, add on?

Or these things an antique from a time before multiple front-ends were necessary, and when they were safely run on a trusted network alone, and there will never be a place for their return?

[pjmlp]

CLIPPER applications running inside a MS-DOS virtual window, because workers still needed to access Office from their Windows 3.11 for Workgroups environment.

Delphi and C++ Builder, the simplicity of VB for laying out forms, with the performance of native code. These still exist by the way.

[krill]

I think Oracle APEX would be a modern web equivalent.