Maintence moving forward with easy development

[thefox149]

Hi guys I have a couple of websites that are exactly the same for two differnt companies these apps are identical except the data that the companies store in them. These have been working fantastcally as there is only two but I have some plans to expand soon. once I start getting to five or 6 rolling out changes is going to be be a pain.

Presently all of the sites formating is stored in their database so that is cool. What I want is a more centralised model eg both sites using the same webforms for easy development ( just drope the new pages in) but how do I approach this? the same goes with the databases there are 2 separate database what if I need to add a new field I would need to go into every single one. Is there a way to cascade the changes accross the databases

I am using sql server express for the dbases.

My cat's name is sprinkles
-Ralph Wigam

 

[whatsthehampton]

Hi Ralph,

Well you could host all your sites on the same server and if you use SQL Server 2005 have just one database with each site being identified by the 'ApplicationID' in the membership provider.
Or.. Use a custom way to identify each site's data as theirs. Such as have a "Site" field in all the tables that
marks which site that data belongs to.

J

http://www.bst.ac.jp

 

[jshurst]

I agree, unless you have a centralized database then you will need to go to all of them, unless you have a centralized web server. You could create one font end web app, with different backends (and perhaps one centralized database for security). Then when a user log's in you can determine the correct connection string based on their security profile and connect them to the correct db.

You could even create a small page that acts like query analyzer so that when you (the admin) needs to make changes you could put the sql statement in there and have run the query against all the databases (connection strings).

You'll need to be very careful when you do though.

 

[thefox149]

I had thought of the this model was not sure if was common practise though that why I posted this. I am only running on server. My only concern is with connections and dabase size and performance

My ideas to have a login page that check which domain thay came in from check that against a user/permission database which storese user's page prefences access level and a connection string (depending on if I use multiple dbases) and company. Once passed I can connect to the relvant database or alternative ifI use the opne database pass the "company" to all stored procedures I call

Can I set up IIS to have mutliple websites that all use the same virtual virtual directory.

eg

http://www.sitea.com

>c:\Sitefiles

http://www.siteb.com

>c:\Sitefiles

that way I can use IIS connects to control how many users and also webmail app that I currently utilise...I suppose I shoult try this hey ?


My cat's name is sprinkles
-Ralph Wigam

 

[jshurst]

I don't see how you would use IIS in that way. You could have subfolders in IIS, or you could use http-headers to go to different virtual folders, that's probably the way you want to go.