pabulumba stores text or other types of data such as dates, options, or hierarchical information in records. It can also record and display one-to-many relationship information, such as an invoice with more than one purchased item.
Text (single lines of input)
Text areas (paragraphs of information)
Dates / date picker
Checkboxes
File uploads
Lists of links (URLs)
Radio buttons
Select list (drop down lists)
Select lists can control the contents of another (or as many as required)
Trees (for hierarchical data such as plant items, stock, or a file structure)
No coding necessary to build an application
Keep track of changes to records, and who performed them - on the record itself
Duplicate entire records with two clicks
Jump to recently viewed records with a single click - no matter which menu
Use rules to enforce supervisory approval of changes
Build own reports - as the data structure is defined, so is the report, and the selection parameters
Sum, count, and average numerical data
Select and update records en masse
Custom reports (SQL knowledge required)
Customise the user interface as much as necessary (HTML and CSS knowledge required)
Output data to popular spreadsheet formats
Generate a pseudo entity relationship diagram to show relationships between tables graphically
As many different roles as required for the task at hand (default of 10)
The idea for pabulumba came about when learning about XML; a document that "described itself" seemed magical.
XML seemed the ideal way to store configuration information for an application; edit the file directly, and the application changes behaviour instantly. The order of objects and all settings are visible and accessible.
The other holy grail was the separation of content and presentation. pabulumba produces beautiful, elegant XML structures (content) which XSLT then transforms into rather prosaic HTML (presentation), which can be device-independent.