Later this week the new Thingy asset will be committed to subversion, and thusly become available in an upcoming 7.5 beta release. It still needs a bit of polish: some bug testing, some pretty templates, and a few more automated tests. Overall though the code for it is done and it is absolutely amazing.

For those of you that don't know about Thingy it is a point and click web application builder for WebGUI. Some might say it's the next evolution of Data Form or SQL Form. Some might call it an easier web-based version of MS Access. Programers might call it a CRUD editor. Still others may call it a data entry and retrieval system. We call it Thingy, because it helps you create "Things" and link those "Things" to other "Things", thusly building out a complex web based application. No templates necessary (though you can template it if you want to). No programming necessary (though you can hook in workflows if you want to). No database knowledge necessary (though you can query it using SQL Reports if you want to).

Some of its features are:

• Create as many "Things" as you want to in a single Thingy and link them together.
• Each "Thing" may have an unlimited number of fields of many different types (text, phone numbers, files, select lists, and more).
• You can set privileges on who can add, edit, import, export, search, and view each thing.
• You can set which thing is the default thing, and which view of it is the default.
• You can attach workflows to each thing that are triggered upon add, edit, and delete of records in it.
• You can import and export data in and out of the thing using simple tab delimited files that can easily be manipulated in a spread sheet program.
• Search on any field, and choose how the search results are sorted and displayed.