Ensure data integrety?

damnyanks

Heya,

Drawing up overview of my final year project (For next year). It's going to be an applicationt that stores information that can be accessed by any application with any language. Webservices make sense for this but what I'm having problems working out is this... (Or do they Feedback appreciated)

Lets say 5 user accounts exist (They will be commerce accounts) Each application should be able to modify, use or delete info from these accounts but at the end of the day the original 5 accounts will exist. Also the new edited accounts will also exist for others to access and create again.

My main concern is the data could get out of control. 10 people may access the accounts and create their own version of each account. What would be the best way to do this? I'm thinking of just adding a new version entry into each accounts XML file.

Also I want to allow other developers to be able to access functionality of classes / libraries that are created in the application.
Going to write the application in .Net and Java. The "Server" side will be written in Java and will contain most of the different functionality. How difficult is it to allow C++, .Net or some random language to access the functionality ?

madramor

regarding webservices and interaction

1: very basic
Use HTTP protocol
client sends a http request to the server ie(<request>time</request>)
server reads http request and sends response <answer>01.00</answer>

2: standard
use soap
client sends a soap request to server (soap is just a standard for the above method)
server reads sopa message and sends response

3: advanced
using webservices
client contacts a webservice registery looking for the time
client gets a WSDL message back from the registery
client uses the info in WSDL message to contact the server with the correct formatted request

web service is registered with a registery JAXR


1,2,3
this is all language nutral because it communicates using xml
its so simple yet so functional and powerful

can you give a more real world description of the user account problem

OMcGovern

Are you saying that you intend to use XML files as storage for your data ?
Ohhh.... sounds horrible.
Why aren't you using a database ?

I'm not sure exactly what "commerce accounts" are ?
Do you mean company accounts... where multiple users have access to them ?

As a rule, in financial applications, you never delete anything..... ever.
That means that you may end up archiving ever single change made to an account, by any user. You might have a "CUSTOMER" table, which stores the live records. And a "CUSTOMER_HISTORY" table which has archived ever change ever made to that CUSTOMER record. Along with the time and date the change occured, and a user id of who changed it.
Being able to trace who made a change, and possibly allow the user to add a free text comment describing the change are invaluable.

The technology you use is up to you... but at least databases can be secured with a password. XML files cannot.

regards,
Owen

amen

I sure you have though of it but you would wanting to be saving your changes within a some sort of transaction manager (using a db thats easy) if its a flat/xml file you might need to write/create your own!

NutJob

Dont use flat Xml files

use Xindice with some Xpath

WSDL is recommended but youll get away with Soap

damnyanks

Eh didn't explain it properly will do later too tired hehe