Duplicate Application .... Question

[Rich Hartnett]

I have an application I built for my police department. It consists of many tables, reports and web pages. In short, it works great, but took a lot of time to build.

I would like to duplicate the entire application for use by another agency, which will be hosted on our department server. I have created a new folder for this other agency, and copied all of the tables, reports, etc. into this folder. Of course there will be "name" changes on the reports, etc., and the actual web addresses to access "their" screens (a5w pages) will be different, but what I want to know is if I am going to run into problems because the tables, data dictionaries, etc. all have the same names as the ones in the other folder? (The two applications are in different folders, but both folders reside in the same root directory folder.)

And if I will, is there an easier to "duplicate" and application so it doesn't have to be rebuilt in its entirety?

[Steve Workings]

Re: Duplicate Application .... Question

I think you're on track Rich -- you can duplicate databases like this just fine.

Make real sure the PathAlias.adb_path alias points to the correct data as well.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Duplicate Application .... Question

There was a problem with V7 if you used the logintest method to ensure login. The problem was if you used the same variable in both applications, then a user logged into app1, on the same browser, during the same session, could access app2 without officially logging in.

If I understand you second question, yes you can just create a new Profile and publish the application to a new area thereby creating "two" copies of the same application from the single source. You'd have to be selective on how you copied the database tables if they contained data from app1 deployment.

[Pat Bremkamp]

Re: Duplicate Application .... Question

Rich,

Actually, although it is easy, there are a few things to worry about. I have three customers who use basically the same applicaiton, so I've noticed some "problems".

First, after seeing your application at the conference, I imagine there will be more that just this one department who will want to use your application, and they probably won't all use your server. So, you'll want to prepare your application for multiple customers. The first concern is the css. Customers seem to get just as worked up over the colors as they do the functionality! So, I would suggest you make a local copy (not a global copy) of the style sheet and give it some standard name that you can use in all your components and pages. Also, pick generic names for any graphics, for example in your headings, so you can just rename everyone's graphic to the standard name.

Also on css, Alpha tends to be very "helpful" by remembering your last css, so as you switch between versions, you'll need to reselect the local css.

It would be a good idea to add a "version" table to your application and display the version in the login or an "about" screen. As you make changes, update the version, because over time they'll get out of synch.

Also, as they grow apart, you'll wish you had more documentation, so bite the bullet and start creating written documenation.

As you suggested, I keep my versions separated by folders. So, for example, on my C drive I would have folders "Jewel" and "Mist" (two real towns here in Oregon) for the application, then in the A5Webroot, I also have Jewel and Mist, and then I have a folder called A5Backup and have Jewel and Mist subfolders in there.

However, sometimes Alpha loses those folder names. If you ever do a backup and restore, always check the destination folder before you publish, especially after the restore. Occasionally, that gets lost.

Congratulations on your app!

Pat

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Duplicate Application .... Question

Excellent. Thanks everyone for the assistance. It sounds like I won't have to "re-invent the wheel" after all.

And Pat, thanks for the tidbits on the style sheets. I'll keep that in mind.