how about having a company table, and company_code column across all relevant table, although you'll have to modify your application also, which would be an additional clause in the WHERE condition e.g where company_code = 'which company user has logged in'.
The user has to specify while logging under which company he's going to work on.
This way would be ideal even for your Global financial consolidations if the mgmt requires in the due course.
other option would be of two tables, Company , Organization, where you can have company1, org1, org2 etc., this can also be applied in the same pattern as stated above.
On 4/18/06, Achilleus Mantzios <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi, i have run into the following problem.Let me describe the context first.When i joined the company(ies) i work for (a group of Shipping Mgmt/
Owenship/Agent companies), the only thing i was told when i starteddesigning the DB/Apps was just one company.So i built everything into one single DB, and i wrote the appshaving one company in mind.
Our architecture is based on jboss3/postgresql (curenctly 7.4.12).There is one .ear file, which authenticates users against a lotusnotes ldap server.At the time, the corporate organisational model was a little bit wierd:
- Many Indepentent ownership companies- Many Independent Mgmg companies(but all busines was with one company in mind).Each App user is a member of one or more ldap groups, each groupmapping to a mgmt company.
So i ended up with- one DB with 173 tables- one DB user (postgres)- one .EAR application with 148,827 lines of code.Now the requirements start to change.The boss now bought some other types of vessels too.
So virtually there must be N separate distinct apps, where N is the numberof Mgmt companies (roughly one for every type of vessel), where each appsees and manages only its data.Moreover there are some apps that should see global data for some specific
tables. (like the crew data, people in the crew move from one type ofvessel to the other so they are not tied to a Mgmt company).These new requirements are of legal nature, as well as ofoperational. (People managing a type of vessels dont want to mess with
another type,and auditors must see each company completely separated from the rest).Doing it with extra code would be a real pain, since i would have torefineall security/authentication based on the groups (
[EMAIL PROTECTED])that a person belongs to. Also this way no inherent isolation/securitywould hold.Now i am thinking of restructuring the whole architecture as:- Create one EAR app for every mgmt company
- Create one DB USER for every mgmg company- Create one SCHEMA (same as the USER) for every mgmt company(mgmtcompany1,mgmtcompany2,etc...)- Find a way (links/xdoclet/eclipse?) to have *one* common code base for
the N EAR apps.- Tweak with jboss*.xml to map java:comp/env/jdbc/DB tojava:/pgsql, where pgsql authenticateswith the corresponding DB USER.- Classify the tables into
- The ones that apply to ALL mgmt companies (and leave them in thepublic schema)- The ones that apply *only* to a mgmt company and so create one undereach SCHEMA- Load the data in *each* SCHEMA, except the tables that apply to all.
- Define a process of "mgmt company"fying the tables in each schema (e.g.delete from mgmtcompany1.vessels the vessels that dont belong tomgmtcompany1, and so forth)- Resolve FK constraint issues
- The default search_path in psql (whats the the equivalent in jdbc?) is$user,public, so effectively *each* EAR will hit automagically the correctmgmtcompanyN.* tables, or the public.* tables if these tables apply to all
mgmt companies.With this way, the hard work is DB oriented, and not APP oriented.However i wonder whether someone else has gone thru a similar process,or if someone finds some assumption conceptually flawed.
Thanx for reading, and for any possible thoughts.---Achilleus---(end of broadcast)---TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives?
http://archives.postgresql.org-- regards, Luckys...
