Re: Concept help required

David, > =Prevailing wisdom in system design suggests that the data should be 'designed' first, and 'code'/processing > only later (relational or structured design philosophy, even object-oriented design). Accordingly I recommend > considering which parts of your current files should be converted into MySQL tables, and what might need to be > added/subtracted to ensure that the relationships between tables is adequately expressed/because that makes > other 'old data' unnecessary. As you would seem to have identified your data, and grouped/categorised it into > tables, you might be able to go straight into the process of 'normalising' your data - a series of > steps/techniques which enable you to analyse the data and structure it into a 'relational' form. (if you are not > familiar with this term: it's back to the books) > Actually the Filemaker system is fairly 'normalised' having been developed over a couple of years, our previous web developer (commercial partner) pulled out of our service an I stepped in to deliver the goods and in doing so, went through the analysis and re-design process. It may well be that there could be some marginal improvement in doing it again. I'll have a look anyway - its part of the learning process. > =Have I misunderstood? It seems to me that you are not offering this data to "the web", ie I can't get to it; > you are only offering it to the copyright fee-paying clients. Hence the publishers' argument seems > illogical/ignorant... > Yes, exactly, but they control what happens and we are not mature enough as a service to hit them over the heads yet. > > > > I run a dual site with a main 'Live' service and a Training service allowing > > users to play with the processes before they get near the real thing. > > =and now a third environment: for development, and a fourth: for system testing... > I did omit to say that my server hosts a development solution (Filemaker/Lasso) and that as well as the dev databases being on my laptop, so is the MySQL/PHP solution. New laptop expected within a couple of weeks and this one will then be switched to Linux. Regards George --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.307 / Virus Database: 168 - Release Date: 11/12/01 _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com