For one project, we were creating a data management system to maintain and enter data across hundreds of database tables. We used the Yahoo (YUI) Javascript framework to render the web UI, and we quickly discovered that we were spending a lot of time hand-coding Javascript to implement common configuration and functionality for each table. For example, one required feature was the ability to select a table row, and have a dialog popup that allowed all of the fields in the table row to be edited at once.

With the size of the project, we quickly realised that the rate of progress to build each table was too expensive, and as we added a feature to a new table we often needed to go back and retrospectively add it to an earlier table.

The solution was to build extensions to the YUI Javascript framework, that combined browser-side Javascript enhancements, with server-side tag libraries to automatically generate Javascript and data from simple business objects.