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Centralized
The Centralized design pattern is used to build a more powerful “database-oriented” application that centralizes data within a single site or a limited number of sites. It is most like the use of a classic relational database application architecture. The primary purpose is to make a transactional application more scalable and manageable.
The best use for this type of design is a situation with many things, with relatively little data, with less collaborative work. For instance, you could create a site for each customer. But in these sites, you don’t really do collaborative work, it primarily just stores key information. Instead of having many sites, possibly thousands, you can centralize the information in a single site.
You do this by using unique key ids, as in classic relational database applications. Using this design pattern you can create more structured and scalable applications that work with SharePoint data. But, the application must be far more transactional. You can also use it with external application data.
Our primary use of this design pattern in Breeze is by using a separate SQL Server database and various key tables to create our relational environment. Thus, instead of having a single site for a centralized design we are using the pattern to support multiple applications.
At the core are our Employees and Customers that are stored in SQL Server tables. We then build processes around them.
Expense Tracking
We have an expense tracking process that is part of our Customer Project solution. The users track their expenses for each customer and project. These are all related. The projects are in SharePoint. The customers and expense items are in SQL Server. This is a classic normalized application.
Below we show the display of expenses in the Customer Project Dashboard. This where the users enter and track their expenses. CorasWorks supports the read/write access to SQL Server and most other databases.
Click here to access the Expense Tracking solution in the Customer Project Dashboard.
Dataspace
This ability to normalize data using a Centralized pattern all comes together via the use of a Dataspace. This is a workspace that only contains data. Here you can put master lists that are used in the Master pattern or what we call Data Providers that are used for additional applications such as Centralized applications. This allows you to centrally manage your systems data connections to SharePoint data and external data. Alternatively, the master lists and data providers may also be distributed and located within individual sites. All of this is possible because of the modular architecture of CorasWorks and how easily you can connect to remote data sources.
Click here to access the Dataspace in Breeze.
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