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Web tier: servlets, JSP, Web frameworks: Customer specific presentation

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  1. Customer specific presentation (3 messages)

    Hi,
    I suspect that this a very basic question but I'm kind of new to all of this so you're patience is appreciated.

    I designing a web front end to display data retrieved from a database. No big deal in that except that different users will require the data to be presented differently e.g. a status page for one user might display fields a,b,c while a status page for another user might display fields x,y,z.
    The majority of the site will be generic and customer independent.
    What I need to know is am I required to have a different template for each customer e.g. Cust1-Status.jsp, Cust2-Status.jsp etc or is there a more elegant solution to this.

    regards
    Noel
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    Threaded Messages (3)

  2. Customer specific presentation[ Go to top ]

    hi,

    As i don't know the details of your context, the following solution may involve more analysis.

    option1 : XSL/XML to render jsp/html based on the input of the customer. XSL file will be parameterized

    option2 : store the metadata in a table with customer id as the primary key to build the page dynamically. The challenge is linking the UI Fields to the backend DTO. [mapping can be stored in xml file]

    hope that helps,

    Bhagvan K
    http://www.architectcorner.com
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  3. Good question[ Go to top ]

    Hi,I suspect that this a very basic question but I'm kind of new to all of this so you're patience is appreciated.I designing a web front end to display data retrieved from a database. No big deal in that except that different users will require the data to be presented differently e.g. a status page for one user might display fields a,b,c while a status page for another user might display fields x,y,z. The majority of the site will be generic and customer independent.What I need to know is am I required to have a different template for each customer e.g. Cust1-Status.jsp, Cust2-Status.jsp etc or is there a more elegant solution to this.regardsNoel
    That is not a basic question? This is a question that is tough to answer. The two solutions I ahve used in the past are:

    First let me clarify customer:
      A customer in this case is not like a Yahoo mail user. A customer is an organization who is using your application in a different way another group of people are using it.

    1) Create a different view for each customer.
         PRO: If one customer requires some wierd thing it is easy to implement when each customer has its own JSP.
              Adding a new view does not reqire testing all the other views for teh given model.
         CON: You have many similar JSPs to maintain.

    2) Create one view that can be customized by the customer.
         PRO: Smaller number of JSPs to maintain.
         CON: The one view becomes very complex to meet the needs of all your clients.
              The one view becomes a bear to test.
             


       Generally I have found solution 1 to be a more maintainable solution. If using MVC this is a very easy to implement one model and one controll with one view. Then if a customer requests a change to a view you can easily add another view to the struts config or spring xml files.
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  4. Customer specific presentation[ Go to top ]

    Thanks for your help guys. I had thought of both option 1's before posting but I wondered if there was another way.

    regards
    Noel
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