Hi
with my vertical market solution some of my larger clients are asking for the ability to run multiple company files from the 1 head office. Without getting too involved with the accounting of this i think the easiest way for me to handle this would be to run a separate identical database servers for each companies data from the the 1 solution.
Can i use the switchServer fx for this?
Is this what the fx was designed for?
Are there other options?
I cannot claim familiarity with the technical approach to multi-servers, nor with the technical ramifications.
But being more of a consultant than a techie, this is the question that comes to mind:
Is there even a slight possibility that this large client will want to see certain reports crunched across several or all companies? This would be very easy to accomplish if you left a single solution in place on a single Servoy server, after some time/money is invested in a customization that
– adds a Companies table
– adds a company_id column to other tables as needed
– revises queries so that in most cases company_id is added as a criteria to all queries (or perhaps it can be set as a form-based filter on found sets)
Sounds like a lot of work, but IMO centralized data is the way to go. If they ever ask you for a report that tells them “how many Doo-Dads did we sell in 2005 at less than a 50% profit margin, across all companies” and you have split their data out across various back ends & various servers, you might regret the choice to decentralize the data.
I would suspect, also, that there might be various entities in the solution that might be pertinent to more than one company, such as common Contacts … a common Corporate Calendar with company holidays, etc.
kazar
Hi Ilyse
Thanks for your advice.
Yes, this was originally the way i had intended to go by adding cost centres/company_id to relevant tables. As it is inventory related there is a fair amount of change involved as each would want to produce their own inventory reports, sales reports etc.
I wanted to save a bit of work and change to the existing solution for most of the others who will never use this feature. Need to have another chat to the client!
Again thanks for your advice, much appreciated.
As it is inventory related…
well, then, I guess my silly Doo-Dads example wasn’t too far off! Definitely less work, IMO, to add some fields to some tables for this client (and meanwhile also be upgrading your solution for a new enhanced release that can handle multiple companies … right?), than to have to reassemble data to be able to provide enterprise-wide status tracking, reporting, etc.
good luck wtih it,
kazar