Looking for some peer review or alternative ideas on the following...
I'm working on a rather complex B2B CF application where we basically want to have a
single set of code drive different customized "versions" of the application based on a
whole bunch of config settings. This is for an ordering system that will meet the
varying
needs of, say, 20 large corporate trading partners. Set a bunch
of config options for a certain customer, and the app will show certain products and
display and process data in a customized way.
The approach we've been working on is to create a large application structure to hold
the
configuration settings for each customer. The key in the first dimension would be the
customer ID number.
The main config options are numbered, so Customer 1's second config option (set to
Yes or No) would be referenced in a struct like this:
#Application.Str_ConfigCust["1"]["2"]#
Now we also need to store various other string, array and query data for quick
on-the-fly
access, so we're looking at also storing that at the second dim, such as:
#Application.Str_ConfigCust["1"]["OtherDataArray"]#
#Application.Str_ConfigCust["1"]["SomeSimpleString"]#
#Application.Str_ConfigCust["1"]["SomeQuery"]#
We also need to hold the order form data, and there can be multiple forms, so I
figured
there could be a "Form" struct at the second dimension that holds array data for each
form.
So
#Application.Str_ConfigCust["3"]["Form"]["2"]["FormItemsArray"][5][8]# would reference
the form items on row 5, column 8 on Customer 3's Order Form No. 2.
I've never attempted to use arrays, structs and queries to this level of complexity,
or
mix and match them like this in the same structure. The advantage it seems to offer is
that all config data will be held in a single structure, and it'll be easy to
reference
it by customer number and loop over it when needed. But it's also rather complex and
the
var references are long and unwieldy, so I'm having second thoughts. Also, I need to
figure out whether storing all this config data in an application structure will cause
memory problems. None of these arrays or queries are very large, but still...
Any general comments/ideas/brickbats anyone? And how could we roughly estimate how
much
memory a complex structure like this will require?
Gene Kraybill
LPW & Associates
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