Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and their intricate development environments, such as Adobe Flex 2 and Microsoft Silverlight, are getting a lot of attention right now. Yet most dynamic Web sites still work with tried-and-true coding that connects to databases and delivers content as traditional Web pages. But even this development taxes the time and skills of many Web professionals. If you use Adobe Dreamweaver Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and their intricate development environments, such as Adobe Flex 2 and Microsoft Silverlight, are getting a lot of attention right now. Yet most dynamic Web sites still work with tried-and-true coding that connects to databases and delivers content as traditional Web pages. But even this development taxes the time and skills of many Web professionals. If you use Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 or 8 (PC or Mac) for creating these complex sites, then you’ll have an ally in WebAssist’s just-released DataAssist 2.0.I’ve been using the final 2.0 release for about a week to create an online e-commerce site back-ended by Microsoft SQL Server. After this real-world testing, I found DataAssist to be a very powerful, yet easy to use extension that works with classic ASP, PHP, and ColdFusion technology. The key to DataAssist’s usability is a new 10-step wizard that automatically builds pages to search, display, insert, update, and delete data. As part of this visual process, the wizard guides you through binding fields from the database to each of the page types, so there’s no coding involved and the process moves quickly. Moreover, DataAssist automatically creates all the form elements (for, say, search and administrative tasks) and server-side code. As with other WebAssist products (and DataAssist 1.0), pages are based on CSS and follow Web standards. Further, I feel the built-in styles are professional-looking and thus appropriate for public-facing sites — though it’s easy to edit the pages in Dreamweaver to match the design of an existing site.As I got into the more advanced wizard options, DataAssist 2.0 showed a lot of muscle. For example, there’s now multiple record management (for inserting, updating, or deleting multiple database records at once). Additionally, I was impressed by how well the wizard handled even more complex tasks, such as managing multiple relational tables.Lastly, DataAssist 2.0 now integrates advanced search capability. For instance, in my test online store I built a form that let visitors search the catalog by price range, several categories, keywords, or a stock number (SKU). DataAssist 2.0 Availability: Now Pricing: $199.99; $99.99 introductory price until October 23, 2007. Verdict: DataAssist 2.0 is a valuable product for Dreamweaver developers of all levels because it greatly simplifies creating database-driven Web sites. DataAssist builds pages for displaying and altering data based on answers you supply to a wizard. Yet this software is sophisticated enough to handle multiple record management, advanced searches, and relational table management. Technology Industry