tara wrote: 1. design a single, integrated servoy solution
2. design a servoy solution for each department
...Any insight into the implications of this decision?
~ Tara
Although, option 1 is a great way to go if you have similar processes in the whole of the combined solutions AND if you are on a local network and there is not too much WAN connectivity. The "slowness" factor won't be much of an issue if you control the network. Plus, although I won't argue that solutions are smaller and faster to download, once they are, they are cached and will take less time to load.
As Jan mentions, using controller.addFoundSetFilterParam works in smaller solutions, but it also works in larger solutions where you combine it with the use of the security commands. Coming into the system as a specific user or part of a specific group means I can optionally control the results provided by the database.
Advantages to going with #1 are you can share code resources for common tasks. For example, you can create a generic search routine where you pass it parameters of which data providers to search and with which data. This means your search routine can be used across all your subapplications.
Unless your applications are truly DISTINCT from each other, such as the difference between a construction application for managing the building of houses and a pet grooming shop solution, then there will likely be overlap when it comes to the code and what your solution does.
If you do have a good number of various subapplications within one general area, such as an education application that provides services from managing attendance to printing student ID cards then integrating will afford you much more "code leverage".
The disadvantage you are going to find in Servoy, as with FileMaker, is that the level of attention given to organization and facilitating easy maintenence is going to be a HIGH priority. Things can get out of control if you don't apply a strong standards model for your own development - at least in larger applications.
From the sounds of it 90+ database systems (probably files) is a scary thing to manage. But my preference is to keep similar types of systems within one solution. I'll suffer the "first time" intital load of Servoy in favor of being able to "solution hop" within the one solution that addresses a common area.
Just my 2 cents.