Despite Matt's dislike for the tool, Creator is actualy quite good on the mac. The deploy cycle is a bit slow but that it probably because its deploying to the Sun J2EE Server instead of anything related to Creator. If you want to deploy elsewhere it seems to be manual (i.e. export .war file, then manually deploy the war file). I did not find it to be way to long on my 1.5GHz powerbook (wall time about 5 to 20 seconds to deploy some of the smallish example from the Field Guide depending on what else I was doing).

It is definitely worth the $99.95 price tag for building that simple web app that does not need a middle tier. I think it hits the VB programmer level quite nicely. By the way the book is aimed right at the correct spot for the 'corporate developer'. Instead of droning on about 'architectural best practices' it goes straight to showing the reader how to build an app with Creator. Even JSF is an 'oh by the way' topic. There are about 10 pages dedicated to JSF. So don't buy the book if you are looking to understand JSF, if you want a book to recommend to people asking you how to create simple web apps then this is the title.

I know people are tired of hearing about the 'corperate developer' but I once worked with a guy that was managing tens of millions of dollars per year with Excell. He was the only guy on the planet that understood all the VB macros, perhaps he was shooting for job security but I think he bought an Excell for Dummies book to try to make his job easier and ended up managing a ton of money with his 'simple' app. I think the Creator tool could become a web app building tool that people like this guy could use. Many of the common code blocks that are required are captured as Clips so its as easy as drag and drop and your code is done.

It is important to note that Creator is not aimed at 'Enterprise Developers'. It does not grok J2EE development. So if you want a tool that will help you build your Stateless Session Beans look elsewhere. If you are looking though to have a tool that will allow you build out simple three tier (browser to servlet container to db) apps then I'd recommend taking a look at Creator.

My next bit of experimenting is going to be related to getting the page objects to connect to back end services (i.e. ejb session beans) to see if we can use Creator to build front ends for 'real' apps :-)