Re: Clients and financial years

[Neil Tiffin]

At 9:35 AM +0100 3/24/01, Reinhard Müller wrote:
> 1. Multiple clients (I mean several different companies running a single
> installation of gnue)
> I see 3 possibilities:
> a) A database per client: simplest solution, but several drawbacks:
> Tables cannot be shared between clients, data can not (easily) be copied
> between clients, current databases systems tend to loose performance
> with many active databases and so limit the number of clients.
> b) A set of tables per client, with the client number being a part of
> the table name (e.g. supply_chain__base__item01): AFAIK some systems go
> this way, but I don't know if I like it personally. Not sure about
> advantages and disadvantages. Not sure about how many tables may be in a
> database.
> c) A single set of tables where data of all clients sit, with every
> table containing a field with the client id.

I think that company should be part of the database structures.  For
companies that operate internationally it is typical to have to do
accounting on many companies and at the same time run the supply
chain as if all of the companies were one company.

For this to work, security must be considered.  I see two scenarios here:
a) companies have to be completely separate.  this would apply to ASP
or others running multiple companies on the same system and the
companies are really separate.
b) multiple companies who have separate accounting but really operate as one.

And of course you may have both (a) and (b) for an ASP.

I think it is important to have reports and forms that can work
across financial companies.

Neil
address@hidden