[phpBddb-dev1] dbase design

[Janis P. <jan...@on...>]

Hi!
I am not sure if i have correctly understood but I think that I am getting there.:)
There would be many individual servers, which deal with their own information, but we want one "big" that has information about all of them and keeps them up to date. We can't use just one database because each individual server has it's privacy. Is that right?
Here are my thoughts about what could be possible solutions.
We can't make pear-to-pear connections so there is basically three solutions:
1) The central server is open to everybody and individual servers update themselves and central database.
2) Individual servers register with the central server and grant some (read&write) access to it. So central server from time to time checks all registered servers and using its privileges updates all individual servers.
3) This one is basically combination of first two. The individual servers register with the central server and get read privileges to update their databases. Central server from time to time checks registered users and updates central database with collected information from user individual servers.

The differences are in development and control.
The first one is easy to make but has basically no control of individual servers. They may update their own databases but not the central.
Second one gives all control to the central database. Not all individual server administrators would agree with that.
Third one is compromise between first two. Individual servers must register to update their own information. If central server can't update information from a registered user the read access to that user is blocked.

I don't know the exact situation so I really can't decide which could be the best. Also I don't like the idea of developing some special protocol or data format for data transfer. Parsing individual server HTML could take a lot of resources and many errors could occur. I think it would be best if we could use the same old SQL. :)
Any comments would be great. Looks like there will be a lot of fun. :) Not an easy one.

Janis Putrams
p.s
Sorry for my English. Still learning..

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