Choosing the right Commercial framework software while using dot net

This is a message which was taken from the Skype group I am involved with. I was asking some guys what they know about Radzen as a commercial frame work - which works with Angular and dot net and found here: https://www.radzen.com/ 

Most of the guys I know are application developers and all are using commercial frameworks. Some of our company's developers are using Angular as a framework for the application front end.

Commercial Framework is a tool that helps software developers to be more efficient and more cost effective in their development efforts. Thus, the client benefits from that tremendously. It is a set of libraries that automate the software development efforts for the entire team which a major time saver. In some cases, it is called a RAD too which is Rapid Application Development.

See below some notes that I exchanged with a developer within the Skype group and has more than 30 years of experience in custom software development. In the below we mentioned COT and InDe which are commercial frameworks and I do have a license for COT.

@John, how much testing you did with RadZen so far? Is that could be better commercial framework software then COT and also known as Code On Time?

@Doron - RadZen has a lot of nice things and the support is amazing.  2 weeks ago I asked about vb. They said no, and they were a bit interested in it. Today they released support for vb. They have a way to go before they are really RAD platform.  To order a menu items you need to code. Doable but not a RAD environment the way I think it supposed to be.

@John, thanks for the info.. I agree that to code your menu is not a fully RAD yet. I am sure they get there very quickly.

@Doron -There are lots of good things about RadZen. It modern, uses .Net Core 2.xxx, Angular.js and either C# or Vb.Net. For a .Net person that is a solid framework. It generates all the pages needed for CRUD functions. You can then edit those pretty quickly. 

It connects to both MySQL and MS SQL. It connects to others as well but that is all I need.

It handles event oriented programming, which I am more used to than Actions and Business Rules. 

It uses SSRS reporting, but I think that it is server based not local embedded reports.

It still has some rough edges that require coding at a level more than I want at this point. I just had the time to take on those details.

It allows for pretty much any layout design you could imagine using the bootstrap rows and columns processes.

The themes are limited to a few basic colors but still look more modern to me that InDe. Personal opinion only and with bootstrap InDe is probably far better than I give it credit.

At $499 it is a pretty good value if you can live with the missing pieces. There are other added new features all the time so I am confident they will round this platform out as they go. Some issues I ran into I discovered were my own workflow problems.

I have not had as much time with it as I wanted. There is a gamble of being a startup and they could close down. But that is true for any of the platforms the people here are using. Finally, you could ask for better support but I don't know if that is possible. It is pretty amazing.

@John and the all the gang can reply. I am working on a dot net project as well and doing screen scraping on specific web sites, including Amazon and eBay. We are working on 14 sites so far. This type of project you cannot work with a specific RAD. There are too many strings manipulations that needs to be handled.

I am using this library which is called HAP and known as Html Agility Pack and found here: https://html-agility-pack.net/?z=codeplex. We are using multi thread as well which is available in dot net. I have another developer that helps me in this project. Which is a dot net expert and MS MVP. You really need to know dot net for this type of development. Why multi thread? This way we can do parallel processing on multiple sites at the same time. This project is very involved and on each web site we need parse the data into the database in different ways. We need also to figure out each web site structure. 

Now my client is asking me to take Hugh CSV file (different inventory items) and create multiple tables so he/she can edit/or Add new items, and then create another CSV file to be exported to his web site where his items are sold. In this point I could use a RAD - Rapid Application Development to handle this kind of development. I can use Alpha Five and also known as Alpha AnyWhere software development, but I would rather use one language to handle all his applications that we do for this client.

RadZen as a RAD seems to be a more flexible for that kind of app. I do have a license for COT and the enterprise version. I was looking for a RAD that I can do Angular for the client front hand and dot net for the back end. COT does not use Angular at this point. 

For the screen scrapping app eventually, I will use Angular for the front end and wanted to have the same look and feel for all the apps we do for this client. 

TO BE CONTINUED

@Doron, If you need to use Angular and have good support, I suggest RadZen.
Another message from John:
@Doron, RadZen - After I thanked for adding VB support I received this response:
Hi John, 
We are doing our best as always to please our customers! More will come! Best Regards, 

John:
You have to like that kind of response. Maybe I should jump on RadZen and see where they go. Remember RadZen promises 24 hour turnaround on tech support issues. 

From: Doron: 
That's great I am looking into it now. Since I have one project that maybe is the perfect fit for their commercial framework. Will see. 

From John: |
They seem like a good startup company. Somebody mentioned they come from the Telerik background which is very solid if true. After they added VB support I have been considering them again. They certainly meet all my basic platform requirements. Plus the license is not a subscription. 

From Doron: 
Thanks for the info - and it was very comprehensive.

From John:
Okay, if you do I think to contact Radzen, you will be surprised by how accommodating they are. I have been digging deeper into their code using Visual Studio. Coding may be simpler than I first thought. They have fairly robust styling /css in the IDE.