Would any one else say that enterprise systems (+150 tables) are mainly
consisted of wizards.
I think it is accurate to say that many enterprise systems have highly
railroaded interaction methods, like Wizard abuse and very deep menu
structure.
The flow in the software from screen to screen is looselt based on how
the business flows, and is required to be very structured. From screen
to screen the options available to the user are very limited. There is
not much freedom and the user is not overwhelmed with options.
This is because they don't have the resources to make a proper design.
Much of the UI matches the way that additions are made - if functionality
is bolted on, it gets bolted-on UI interaction.
Complex applications require wizards.
For simple applications wizards are not required.
Thats bad UI dogma. I don't think that Rails should adopt the weakest
UI structures just because they are prevalent in the industry.
Economic constraints on the development of large in-house
enterprise systems force them frequently to take a non-systems
approach to ongoing development. You often get duplicated
database tables for instance, or the reverse, over-fat GUIs that
are artificially creating table relationships in code, because the
schema is untouchable. These systems typically have the
worst UIs imaginable, and force their users through wizards,
byzantine menus, etc. because its the only way that they can reliably
enter data.
