Enterprise programming/server strategy

[James Rea]

> As I finish converting our office databases to multi-user and put them  
> into use, I can imagine there will periodically need to be ongoing  
> modifications that will require programming and testing using live  
> data on the server. To avoid working with and changing the actual  
> office data, is it normal practice or even possible to have the  
> databases on a second server which is only used for development? Is it  
> possible to upload a database to more than one server if it is only  
> connected to one at a time? Is there some other way to do this without  
> shutting down the office during development and testing?

Panorama Enterprise has a "clone" feature that allows you to switch a
client between a test server and the production server. This is
described starting on page 196 of the Panorama Enterprise Handbook. This
feature was designed for web publishing, but I think it would work for
shared databases as well.

Another option would be to make a copy of the client database and switch
it to single user. You could either do your development work on the
single user database or you could make another shared database with a
different name on the server. Once you've made your changes you could
use the Source menu in the View wizard to export the revised source code
with your programming changes, then open the original database and
import the sort code into it (or if you've only changed one or two
procedures it might be easier to just copy and paste).

I'm assuming that you are not changing the field structure of the
database. If you need to do that you'll have to take the database
offline. To minimize that I'd probably first change the field structure
and get that back online right away, then go back and change the
procedures using the techniques described above.

Jim Rea
President, ProVUE Development

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