Yesterday at 9:30pm, Jay Askren said:
1. Security
This is my biggest concern. If someone would hack into the application or
the server, this would be very bad publicity for the ward and the church in
general. I would imagine it could cause many to go inactive. I plan to
store names of all family members, email addresses, phone numbers,
addresses, birthdates, and membership numbers. I could see that being a big
problem if someone hacked into the system. This is probably a bigger
concern since I would be using a free server.
2. I don't know that the church would be ok with it.
These two go together: I don't think the church would be okay with you
pulling all of that very confidential information (birthdates and
membership numbers?) out of MLS and into some other system. I also don't
see how membership numbers help in an emergency preparedness system.
Birthdates are understandable, but I think that substantially the same
thing could be accomplished with a birthyear or age field instead. The
contact information isn't quite as sensitive, in my opinion, as much of
it is already published elsewhere.
If you can eliminate the need for especially sensitive information, and
use SSL (even a self-signed cert), and know what you're doing in your web
development, it isn't impossible to write a secure application. Of course,
the security of the machine hosting it is also a factor in the overall
security of your data. So on MS Windows, it might be a losing battle no
matter what... ;)
3. Administration
If we create a web application, we would also need someone who can do basic
administration stuff, like redeploy the application when it goes down and
stuff like that. That means if I move, either we find someone else to do it
in the ward to do basic admin stuff, or the emergency preparedness program
dies. If they have a simple application, practically anyone can use it who
can use a computer.
This is going to be an issue with any system. Ease of use and ease of
administration are separate issues, but I think you may be right, an app
that doesn't require a web server would probably be easier to administer.
Though make sure to consider how to install it, import and export data,
and migrate it from one computer to another.
The counter argument to this is that having it available on just one
computer as a desktop app means only one person can view or edit it at a
time, and they have to be physically present at the computer where the
program runs. Which would basically force it to be a clerk's office
program in most cases. And a clerk's office computer already has enough
contention for getting into MLS in most wards.
4. Without internet access, the app can't be used.
5. Web hosting generally cost money
Both of these go away if the computer hosting it is running Apache (for
example). It's easy to host an Apache+PHP system on any OS (especially
with WAMP or LAMP setups, or even on OSX). This would also mean your
program could be cross platform, both for hosting it and for accessing it.
And when the machine is connected to the internet, the program would be
accessible, and when it isn't, it would still work locally. At least then
you'd have the choice of internet operation or not.
If you're going to make this open source, writing it in PHP for example
would make it more accessible to people who want to customize it.
Also, believe it or not, some clerk's offices are authorized for internet
access, and I hope they continue in that direction. When your clerk or
exec sec (whoever's in charge of the web site on lds.org) doesn't have
internet at home, it's a real pain, not to mention the difficulty of
getting everything updated when you can't just pull it up along side MLS
to compare.
One last note: I may be wrong about this, but last time I looked, I seem
to remember that MLS had support for adding custom "talents" or somesuch
to a user's record, so that things like has a truck, chainsaw, or
generator, is a doctor, nurse, or EMT, or is trained in CPR, first aid,
home construction, or emergency radio communications, could be added
directly in MLS, so you wouldn't need to write a separate application at
all, nor worry about exporting sensitive MLS data to somewhere else. Plus
it would get backed up automatically every time MLS gets backed up, and
possibly even backed up to Church HQ with the other data.
Mac
--
Mac Newbold MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macnewbold.com/
_______________________________________________
Ldsoss mailing list
Ldsoss@lists.ldsoss.org
http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
