Dynamc schema

Although databases can easily be extended and changed to match the requirements of your business needs, every so often we have come across 'so called enterprise solutions' which still have a fixed schema and to change it becomes a painful and costly experience. Thus involving recompiling of code, redeploying and utlimately the retesting of your whole application. Some systems try to be flexible by allowing 'spare' or 'user-defined' fields for you to utilise. This however, is still not truly dynamic and if you run out of these 'spare' fields or they are of the wrong type then you are stuck.

To be truly dynamic something far more clever and intuitive is needed. WebDirector uses an entirely dynamic approach requiring no re-compilation, deployment or testing in order to update your schema - in fact no code by anyone is even written.

To change the schema, it's as simple as the selection of the module and type of data item you require and then giving it an appropriate name. Point and click, no code written and it will take you approximately 5 seconds to create a brand new data item which WebDirector will be instantly aware of and can use.

Not only is our schema dynamic but in addition we have meta-tables for all our real data tables. This allows the real table to do what is needed and store appropriate data in the most optimal way it can. But meanwhile with the meta-tables you can still attach additional information and system configuration to that data table but without effecting it's performance or structure within the database in any way. This is a completely optimal mechanism of organising your content in a modular way and allowing you the ultimate flexibility of creating meta data that is also required.

The above meta-data allows us to perform far more than attach simple meta-data to data tables. The real power of attaching meta-data to your data tables comes in the form of:

• Built in validators to ensure 100% integrity of your data
• Mandatory constraints as certain data items
• Dynamic look-ups for module cross-referencing
• Custom select lists which can be defined with both data and label items
• Ability to manipulate data items from security and XML export perspective
   

The above approach allows us to prototype and build applications at a rate matched by no other solution or vendor in the market place because we are simply using a standard interface to create your schema.

No code is written and the application base structure can be created in a matter of hours, not days and weeks. In addition to this though, with our dynamic schema, we can then continously adjust the application structure as the project progresses and as requirements change, all again without writing any additional code.