I am a new apostle of DNN but at this stage I can’t see
the forest for the trees. The trees, however, do look very attractive!
There is a vast amount of excellent
tree-level information in DNN Creative Magazine and elsewhere. But where I am struggling is in respect of whether I will be able
to meet my particular goals through DNN and, if so, what the appropriate strategic direction might be. I am sure that the
former is a resounding ‘yes’; I am
definitely not the first person doing this.
The most appropriate way ahead does, however, have me stumped.
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A little advice on the latter would be very gratefully
accepted before I set off on what I know is going to be a long journey. I am
only an enthusiastic amateur in this whole area; I’m certainly not a full-blown
expert.
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My situation is that I am trying
to web-enable my (in-house developed) transport booking system. Our customers (the target audience for the
application) are about 100 resorts who manage airport transfers on behalf of
their guests. There are between 100 and
300 bookings per day.
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Currently, all transactions (an end-to-end process from
booking entry to end-of-month invoicing) are processed in the office. The
majority of requirements are communicated, and most information is currently managed,
by steam-driven fax/phone. It's expensive and time consuming.
My aim is to have our customers manage their own data over
the net. For instance, they would need
to be able to:
Manage/update
their profile
Make/amend/cancel bookings
View the
confirmed bookings for today/tomorrow/next week etc
View
historical bookings
Search for
individual bookings/passengers
View the
current state of their account
Access the
end-of-month account
Make
payments (probably by Pay Pal)
.. and any
other value-added info that might be handy.
In addition they would need to view:
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<!--[endif]-->a whole lot of static info (timetables, fare schedules,
fleet details, maps etc etc (the easy part), and things like
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<!--[endif]-->‘news tickers’ – (eg “The road is closed south of …”
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<!--[endif]-->etc etc
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I see a staged development:
Stage 1 - read only, apart from, say, profile
management, feedback, comments
Stage 2 – data entry but with manual vetting
in the office prior to data being released in the dB (eg “Yep, that’s clean, so
accept”; or “No, reject it”, and then get back to the originator
to sort it out.)
Stage 3 - automatic
write to the dB (Let it go through, except for inconsistencies rejected by
error-trapping algorithms developed as a result of the problems/errors
harvested during Stage 2)
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The current system:
Microsoft
Access 2002 front end
MSSL Server 2005 dB (65 tables,
100 (stand-alone) queries, 90 forms, 80 reports.)
Windows XP Pro on the office
clients
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The system is definitely mission-critical, as it is also
used for minute-to- minute vehicle coordination.
What I have in aim is to build a dedicated site for the
resort customers. (Our existing site for individual web-surfers will remain
or, most likely, be integrated with the new one.)
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Registered customers will log on to the new,
industrial-strength site. It will have no bells/whistles/ flashes etc. It will be very rich-in-functionality work
tool. There is no need for it to be sexy, it just has to crunch out the information very well.
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Once customers come through the portal they will be filtered
to access only their own information; no looking sideways into their neighbours’
territory.
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The aim is for them to be able to do just about all that we,
in the office, are currently doing for them. In the office, as would be expected, we filter by list-boxes/queries on
a form-by-form/report-by-report basis.
Now my plea. Before I embark on this Great Adventure could I
please have a little reassurance/ advice in these grey areas:
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<!--[endif]-->Can I achieve my goals through DNN? (Even with only a very, very limited knowledge of DNN,
I have a lot of blind faith that this will be resoundingYES.)
- Should I keep the DNN database and current production
dBs separate or should they be merged?
If merged, could you please point me in a direction that explains the
best way – prod into DNN? (There’s many hard-coded linkages between Access and
SQL!) , DNN into prod? Initialise DNN
into prod up front?? Other??
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<!--[endif]-->Will I be safe building in a CSS skin or might that be
too unstable with all the tailoring and different modules that I may require?
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<!--[endif]-->Is it feasible to transfer the necessary
(rebuilt/modified) queries and reports from the existing application into
modules of DNN? (Again, I think that is a firm yes; code is code.) Degree of
difficulty? Any surprises?
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<!--[endif]-->If so, is this best done by simply positioning the
queries etc in text/html modules or is there something out there that will
prove to be a better (ie easier, faster-to-develop, more stable, more
functionality) solution? (I notice in the www.dotnetnuke.com
marketplace a product called ‘ezDNNReports 1.1 by Greenbrier Data LLC
(http://marketplace.dotnetnuke.com/p-45-ezdnnreports-11.aspx). US$149 . I have tried to seek advice directly,
but their site’s Contact Us is not firing; any no other contact details are
available. Any comments?)
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Thanks in anticipation for any advice. The way ahead is pretty foggy at
present. Once I am confident that I am
heading in the right direction I will read, read and read some more to sort out the details.
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