The closest web app analog is (was) ASP.NET WebForms, which has pretty much been replaced by ASP.NET MVC.

WebForms wishes it was VB6, but sadly, the ViewState abstraction leaks complexity like a sieve for any but the most trivial case.

I agree wholeheartedly. Almost all of the abstractions in WebForms are leaky, and the think that it's abstracting... HTML, isn't so complex that it benefits from being abstracted.

It was a learning process for all of us :)

http://apex.oracle.com/ is the closest.

When I explain ApEx I usually describe it as "Access, for Oracle, but with web pages".

And like Access or VB6 it's great while you colour inside the lines. You can use it to smash together small LOB CRUB apps together in hours, even minutes for the smallest ones.

The good thing about Apex is people can provision their own workspaces whwnever they want, but still get the central IT support for backups etc.

Yes, that's definitely an advantage too.

Wavemaker is doing a decent job, but it's probably closer to MS Access for the web with the ability to go deeper using Java.

Sencha architect is trying to do some of the same things as well.

You can take a look at RealStudio. The Web Edition is in the early versions and is still a little rough around the edges though their Mac/Windows desktop development environments are much better and have been around for many years.

Link: http://www.realsoftware.com