[via ApproachingNormal]

The bane of Rails development for myself has been implementing data-driven admins.

In user-created-content applications such as the 37signals apps or cork’d this isn’t a big problem — they don’t need a data-driven admin. Unfortunately for me though, nearly every one of my rails apps in production has needed an admin section, including this blog.

When I recently added the gigs section I toyed with the scaffolding extensions plugin, but found it only mildly more useful than your standard Rails scaffolding (i.e. useless for a commercial-quality app). All I wanted was a super-simple admin (/admin/gigs) for my super simple model (Gig) that would allow me to concentrate on building the front-end.

Luckily, for folks like us, Relevance has announced they’re releasing Streamlined, who’s aim, it seems, is to provide Django-like admin capabilities for your Rails applications. Hopefully we can take all the good bits from Django whilst keeping all the good bits of Rails, and make a Rails-based solution much more appealing for a certain previously-ignored breed of apps.

You can be sure I’ll be checking it out when they release it next month at OSCON. Keep an eye on the Streamlined blog for more info.