Hi,
I'm about to begin the process of defining the architecture of an
tradeshow-type website which will use ASP.NET 2003 (C#) & SQL 2K, and will
run on Server 2003. I've got about 20 regular users of the system, plus
potentially hundreds of occasional visitors, all of whom log into the system
first. The issue that I'm facing is that on the main event entry, there is
a large amount of hierarchical information that needs to be persisted to the
database in a single transaction. That part isn't an issue, but how the
pages are laid out is - and I am not at liberty to change the layout of the
pages. The input screen is designed as a multi-tab interface, with a tab
for agenda items, a tab for participants, a tab for basic information, a tab
for catering, etc. On the final tab (which may be navigated to sequentially
or from any of the other tabs), there is a submit button which saves the
entire data tree to the database. If the user cancels the entry process at
any point, nothing is saved. There is sufficient information that it may
take an individual a full hour to fill out all of the different tabs, so it
would be nice if they wouldn't lose their data if IIS restarts, etc., but
that's not 100% necessary.
I'm trying to examine my best options from an architectural standpoint
regarding how I handle this issue. I'm specifically considering how best to
store the data - In Process (Session), to an XML blob in the SQL database
tied to the user login, which gets read from and written to when the user
navigates between tabs, or perhaps something else. Does anybody have any
suggestions? Preferences?
Thanks, Jim
