[b][size=10pt][size=10pt][b]I only heard of scriptcase a week ago. I saw the demos, and I thought wow, this product is to good to be true. I was excited and figured I could really use a product like this. But I was a little worried, because on the web, a lot of people get previously open source programs and package them and sell them like a working product. I don’t know the history of scriptcase, just what I have seen with every php program online that seems to do amazing things. It is great marketing but no product unless you want to buy a big headache.
So I got busy working on some things and reading the manual. Well, I ran into some problems and tried to reach the technical support. They have a chat but no one is ever there. I tried to reach technical support but they wouldn’t answer. So I continued to work through the manual and I got a grid with some joins to work in there program. In other words, I can play with their program and get it to manipulate the data I have in my database, but will it generate code that will work? They claim it is a code generator.
Well, my next step was to deploy it. This is when I started to get suspicious. It did create zip files but when I place it on a Linux system, it doesn’t work. They have the code divided in hundreds of files. I looked into the files and noticed that all the directory paths were relative but there is no way to instruct the code in the program what paths to use from the scriptcase program so where in my directory structure do I deploy it and how do I get each php file to see the other? I guess I could go through each of the hundreds of files but that could take hours and then I would have to do it each time I generated code. And also, the application programs could not see the lib functions and I didn’t know where to put the lib files either. So I contacted technical support and this time they answered me and they didn’t know the answer to a simple question which was where do I deploy the software? They said an answer that didn’t make any since at all. I even contacted my server admin and told them their answer and they couldn’t make any since of it either. So I tried to explain to them that I needed to know how to deploy the files in relation to each other since the files have relative directory paths when calling other files through includes, requires, etc. They then continued to ignore my question because the ticket system said I was asking the same question again.
So at this point, I am thinking scam. They have a live chat screen that doesn’t work and a technical support ticket system but no technical support. I also tried to call the sales number and the phone just rang and rang no matter what hour I called. I even emailed the sales department and asked them if their company really existed and they never answered. A for real company would really be concerned about public opinion and customer relations, especially with potential customers. A fake company would duck and hide like they did.
Like I said, I have only heard of scriptcase for a week. But I think they put a lot of time and effort into making the product connect and read your database and manipulate the data in front of you with grids and menus and forms and leaving you wow. They build a great website with a ticket system and a chat system. They also put all sorts of demos up to amaze you with what it can do. But the bottom line is that only their program can do all of these things and it doesn’t do the hard part like create code that does any of these things. As a programmer, I know it would only take one person only a few months to create their program and demos but it would tens of thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars(unless everyone worked for free) to actually generate code that could do all these things. It is all just a scam and I feel sorry for the people that were suckered into it. I have tried hard to find PHP code generating programs that work. Actually, everything that scriptcase does is what I am going to have to end up programing myself but fortunately I only have to create code for myself and not thousands of possible data permutations like their program would have to do. The complexity of writing a code generation program like this is just off the scale. I am going to have to write all my grids, menus, searches, and forms from scratch. But hopefully with the help of some class objects out there, I can save some time. But I do wish the authorities would do something about these many scams out there. The reason they are so hard to crack down on is because it is not illegal to sell an incompetent product. My guess is that they have come close to being busted in the past and that is why they do a 20 day trial. Many people will go through that trial and still not know what they have. A trail period is a perfect “get out of jail free card”. There is no way they can be busted when they offer it.[/b][/size][/size][/b]