Can alpha do this? Any advice welcome

[shaun]

Can Alpha do this?

Hi everyone,

Can Alpha do this without me needing to become an xbasic expert? (I�m afraid I just don�t have time):
I want to open another office, but have their data uploaded daily into the main office�s database, so we only have one central database and do not ever duplicate, though I must know and be able to identify that a certain record came from office 2.

Office 2 must be able to process clients locally even if the server is down, so they will need a copy of the main program, but not be able to amend the program, which essentially uploads new data to the main database online daily, identifying itself as office 2.

What must I learn to do this? Am I on the right track in thinking I need to:

Main office: Server has main program file and also has web application server, showing the database on the internet. This should be compiled with runtime, and users access the database locally with a shadow database on their machine.

Office 2: They also have a compiled runtime main database on a server. Workers input data on shadow databases on their machines. At the end of each day they upload the new information to the internet server. They can edit client information at some later date in their office, and when they upload the day�s work data to the internet server, that information is changed on the main database at the main office. (Though they must only be able to edit information that they themselves have first entered.)

Am I on the right track? Is my structure right, and will I need v8 professional, runtime and application server?

Any pointers in the right direction will be most welcome as I tried to work this out with version 6 but found it too difficult.

Can v8 make any of this easier?


Many thanks,
Shaun

[jkletrovets]

Re: Can alpha do this? Any advice welcome

Hi Shaun

I believe it can most certainly be done but I think you are looking up a tall mountain if you would like to do it without learning any xbasic. Action Scripting is very powerful though so you might be able to get it to work.

The one key concept I think you need is either a unique identifier number for each record that delineates where each record has come from or a field in the data table that simply records the office location (i.e. Main Office or Remote Office). This can be accomplished with Action Scripting as you can use it to set the value of either a variable or a field. The user would not have to enter the data. If you don't want to hard code this - this would require a "setup" file as I see it so you can tell the app whether it is the main office or the remote. All easily doable.

If you wanted to use the idea of having an autonumber routine that gives a unique ID number for each record in the database. So, for example you could have the UID numbers with a prefix such as "Rem" for remote and "Main" for Main.

REM000001
REM000002
REM000003
etc

When merged into the main data table you could see all the records but you could easily tell which records came from where:

Main000001
Main000002
REM000001
REM000002
REM000003
Main000003

If I were doing it, I think I might use both methods. But upon thinking about it - your best bet to do it without XBasic is probably to have the field I talked about in the first example. I think you can probably do most of what you want with Action Scripting that way. You can most likely handle the data transfer to the main table that way too.

Hope that helps some. Just my 2 cents - some of the more learned folks around here might have better ideas.

Regards...

Jef

[urbanski]

Re: Can alpha do this? Any advice welcome

This sounds like a job for Web Server.

Jim

[shaun]

Re: Can alpha do this? Any advice welcome

Thanks guys.

In v8 is the web server called Application Server?

The main thing I am concerned about is how the remote office will upload their data. I want them to each day upload any changes they have made i.e. new records and ammended existing records to the internet site.

Thanks,
Shaun

[DaveM]

Re: Can alpha do this? Any advice welcome

Shaun,

Web server may be the answer, however there are many systems running by internet tunnelling today and so can Alpha.

First concern is a server that rarely goes down and a solid internet setup. You can the give access from the server so the other computers (only!) can connect. This way all the user data can be entered and used as needed.

As far as keeping them seperate, You can set up an account for each location in you main company table and connect this to a same field in your records.

I believe this to be the best method. I use it in a lot of my programs.

Dave Mason
www.lotrun.com