General talk about software patterns

["Ralph Johnson" <johnson AT cs.uiuc.edu>]

There isn't enough information here for us to give you much concrete help.  For example, can this system inport and export data?  Then perhaps the best way is to export the data from each machine and inport it all into one machine.  On the other hand, perhaps the database is fairly easy to access.  This would be true if they used Access or SQL Server, but not if the "database" were a custom package.  If the database were easy to access, you could write a script that extracts data from one of the databases and puts it in a public place.  You could then run that script on each machine.  You'd write another script that would read the data from each machine and put it all in the database of a single machine, which could then run a report on the consolidated data.  Alternatively, you might make a web interface to the database and let the central machine fetch the data.

 

Noneof these solutions are very elegant.  There are lots of things that could go wrong with them.  A full client server system would be more elegant, but it would require writing a lot of software.  My guess is that part of the requirements that you didn't state is that your boss wants you to reuse the old software as much as possible and to get the whole thing done with as little work as possible.  But maybe I am misinterpreting the situation, and this is not a package that you bought, but a package that your company sells, and they want to redesign the whole thing.  If that is the case, my advice is all wrong.

 

There are many options, and you didn't give enough information for us to know which ones are possible or not possible.  For example, how good a programmer are you?  Do you have source for the system?  How much data is collected each day?  How soon does this have to be done?  How long is this system going to be continued to be used?  E-mail is a very inefficient way to find this out.  There are many options, and there is no one place you can go do learn them.  Figuring out the best choice is basically learning software architecture.  I suggest you find a local software architect that you can talk to.

 

-Ralph Johnson

 

On 4/19/06, Reza Razavipour <rrazavipour AT stbernard.com> wrote:

To all,

I have a software that runs on Windows, it has reporting built in, from a database. So customers buy this and install on their workstations. The problem is that each workstation can report on their own data only. I need to come up with an architecture for a central reporter to allow for a consolidated report of all these workstations aggregated data.

Anyone can tel where to go to learn about my options.

Thanks,

Reza