how to set up multi-user web app database
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:25 pm
Probably, this is incredibly simple and forgive me if this is a stupid question..
I currently have a Microsoft Access app for a niche market- it runs as a client/server setup on each of my client's office networks. I have around 60 or so clients. I need, desperately, to create a 'cloud' or web version of this application and charge a monthly subscription for the use of it (the app- web or not- is exactly the same for all my clients, only their data is unique). I realize Access isn't really right for the job. From what I gather it would be PHP or Java along with an SQL or mySQL database.
The fundamental issue I can't seem to find an answer to- I'm not a web programmer, just Access- is.... If you have a web page where clients first enter a user name and password to access just their particular data, is the back end database just one gigantic database file or does each 'user' have their own unique database file, generated when they set their account up and pointed to by the log in web page? I need to know what the 'industry standard' is on this as it would help me begin to look at the right software.
For example:
It's possible that there could be 3000 client accounts (each with from 1 to 10 or so users using the same data set, so there might be multiple people accessing the same data at the same time, for just one client account), and each client account might have 10,000 or so records, so a single database file seems huge to me. So would there be 3000 separate data files, one for each client account? Again, the way they'd use the app is just go to a web page- www.myapplogon.com, enter they're user name and password, and then they'd be taken to the web app- www.mywebapp.com- that would have just their own particular data.
I know you could query even a giant database to just pull the user name's data, but I'm not clear on exactly how this would work. Again, I'm looking for the 'best practice' on this as I need to keep the data absolutely reliably separated between client accounts.
I'm trying to set up a monthly subscription, web-based version of the desktop software I already have. Any help PHPdn might be able to give would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.
I currently have a Microsoft Access app for a niche market- it runs as a client/server setup on each of my client's office networks. I have around 60 or so clients. I need, desperately, to create a 'cloud' or web version of this application and charge a monthly subscription for the use of it (the app- web or not- is exactly the same for all my clients, only their data is unique). I realize Access isn't really right for the job. From what I gather it would be PHP or Java along with an SQL or mySQL database.
The fundamental issue I can't seem to find an answer to- I'm not a web programmer, just Access- is.... If you have a web page where clients first enter a user name and password to access just their particular data, is the back end database just one gigantic database file or does each 'user' have their own unique database file, generated when they set their account up and pointed to by the log in web page? I need to know what the 'industry standard' is on this as it would help me begin to look at the right software.
For example:
It's possible that there could be 3000 client accounts (each with from 1 to 10 or so users using the same data set, so there might be multiple people accessing the same data at the same time, for just one client account), and each client account might have 10,000 or so records, so a single database file seems huge to me. So would there be 3000 separate data files, one for each client account? Again, the way they'd use the app is just go to a web page- www.myapplogon.com, enter they're user name and password, and then they'd be taken to the web app- www.mywebapp.com- that would have just their own particular data.
I know you could query even a giant database to just pull the user name's data, but I'm not clear on exactly how this would work. Again, I'm looking for the 'best practice' on this as I need to keep the data absolutely reliably separated between client accounts.
I'm trying to set up a monthly subscription, web-based version of the desktop software I already have. Any help PHPdn might be able to give would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.