Dan Hanks wrote: > Having said that, my personal belief is that computers and particularly > web technologies have been developed and are advancing to further the > work of > the Lord, to provide greater convenience and efficiency in doing His > work. They provide accelerated means of handling the "administration" > tasks so we can have more time to focus on the "ministering" tasks. I > believe a centralized system will help us to do that.
Absolutely. Now let me suggest a straightforward plan to get moving quickly and arrive at the architecture I've proposed. First, just build a plain old web app that's specific to only one troop. Add all the features and functionality that exactly one troop needs. At this step, we can leverage many of the skills that the web developers on this list already have. It will also be instantly usable. However, be careful to use cross-platform technologies. Shell scripts, assembly code, and ActiveX are bad ideas, because we need portable code for the next steps. Important detail: I think the web app should never gain the ability to manage multiple troops in a single set of database tables. However, it's fine to store multiple troops in different databases all running in the same database server. Second, create an installer that lets people easily install the web app on their desktop and use it locally (via "http://localhost...";). Those who can't use the remote app due to parents' privacy concerns can probably benefit from the installer. There should be an installer for both Windows and Mac. Leave *nix installation to the *nix distributors. Third, add a function to the web app that lets people synchronize their local database with an encrypted copy on a remote server. This is going to be tricky, but it's worth the effort for enabling offline use and eliminating privacy concerns. I believe this plan covers all the bases: - coders can hack away now - we leverage the HTML skills almost everyone has - people can run their own servers if they want - no one has to host all the data for all troops - offline use is an eventual goal and we have a plan for getting there - it should be possible to get offline access to an online database Anyone disagree? Now, as for choosing the web app server technology... yikes. Please be nice to each other. :-) FWIW, I'd vote for Django in this case. Django is written in Python, a highly agile and portable language, and it's inspired by Zope, Ruby on Rails, and other projects. RoR or TurboGears might also do well. But it's really up to the project maintainer, and that's not me. Shane _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
