The NeXT (then Apple) product you are talking about is/was WebObjects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects

It allowed for both HTML applications and Java apps (both JNLP and completely local). And before the transition to Java it was ObectiveC, and I think even had a scripting language (WebScript?). It was beautiful, fast, and for lots of things you could just wire up a small app to a database with almost no code (then later add the business code after the demo).

One of my first jobs was writing a web app using it, and those were fun days.

The EnterpriseObjects part (the part that managed data to/from the database) survived for a long time in parts of Apple's web back-end. And I have always thought that WebObjects was the model that Ruby-on-Rails was designed to mimic (in many ways, but not all).

Edit: here is some documentation I just found: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Le...

Fascinating! Makes sense that it would have been the inspiration for Rails