title: Web-based database/forms RAD tool
body: <p>I'm searching for something of which I don't really know the name of.</p>
  
  <p>From time to time, I have to develop a small tool for a small group of users which is basically a web frontend to one or two database tables. It's very basic and something which one could do in a spreadsheet (without the problem that only one user can have the file open at a time and something like Sharepoint is not available) or for what one would have chosen MS Access in the 90s. Google Docs would also be possible, but we'd like to keep our data in-house. (I for myself just use phpMyAdmin for that, but it's not suitable for not tech-savvy end-users.)</p>
  
  <p>So I'm looking for a tool which generates/provides a forms-based Web interface for simple models or database schemes that I create. First, is there a common name for such a thing? And second, does anyone have recommendations (preferably open source and/or free)? The closest thing I've come to is the scaffold generator in Ruby on Rails, but it's very basic and not optimal since it's only designed for generating prototype could which one should edit later, and last time I have looked at it, it was not possible to differently updating your model, i. e. regenerate code for model changes but preserving the manual changes of your code.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>