I am facing a particular challenge in terms of designing a webdev
application and looking for ideas from the forum on best possible design
methodology.

I have an insurance system developed in webdev that is currently being
used by two separate customers. Both customers use the system
primarily to provide motor cover-related insurance products.
Though the two customers provide the same kind of insurance cover, the
way the premiums are calculated and the data that is stored for each
customer is different as their product offerings are different. For
example Customer 1 provides motor cover based on the number of vehicles
insured, sum covered, engine capacity of the vehicles etc. Customer 2
uses the same fields as customer 1 but also requires the age of the
primary drivers and does not require to know the number of vehicles
insured.

If I was to market this product to other customers then I may find that
their requirements may be slightly different to the first two and they
may have their own specific products that behave differently.

I could build the entire logic for the all the customers in a single
application but this presents numerous problems. For example every time
a new field is added to the database or a new business rule is created
to cater for a specific customer's requirements the analysis would have
to be changed and updates would have to be provided to all of the
customers though only one customer's requirements have changed.

Is there a way to externalize customer specifc "product definition" data
and logic outside the core system so that I can provide customized
products as required by each of my customer but keeping the core untouched?

A way of defining "dynamic forms with their own data validation and
calculation rules" that could be passed back to the core system. This
way when an individual customer's requirements change - I just have to
change the analysis, forms and codes for that customer without affecting
any of other customers.

Almost like calling a webdev application from another webdev application
whilst being able to exchange data between them?

Any ideas on how to go about it?

Thanks and regards

Gautam

How do you generate a corresponding control (edit box, combo, checkbox
etc) on a webdev page and specify where in the form it should be displayed?
How do you then read the content of the user input?
How do you reference the "control" in your dynamic code?

Does this not create a huge maintenance issues? How about creating
reports on this user specific data?

Sometimes additional fields may required based on the input of the
current field/value - how would we put logic to do this?

I was thinking along the lines of being able to create mini apps that
could be called from the main/core application. For example you could
define the entire customer specific forms and data in a separate webdev
application and then call the relevant page from the main webdev
application as and when required. Obviously the data exchange between
the main application and the mini app would be structured and predefined.
You could then have several of these mini apps - one for each customer's
specific requirements. That way you can utilize the full power of WX
without having to write too much custom code. It becomes very easy to
maintain the customer specific code too and any changes made are
isolated and do not affect other customers.

Is there a way to do this in webdev? I was thinking of external
components but that would require the external component to be included
in the core application at design time and that would then defeat the
objective.

Thanks and regards

Gautam