Looking for some advice before starting a project (maybe!)
I'm looking to create a bespoke system for a travel company that covers the lifecycle of a holiday from conception, contracting, pricing, sale, document production & alteration and finally reporting & accounting. In addition to providing CMS capabilities, it will need to cope with XML feeds from airlines & cruise companies, ecommerce integration with existing payment gateways, together with a bespoke back end database (which is my strength) providing CRM, supplier management, holiday management and accounting functions. It will provide an internal sales platform for a call centre as well as a web facing sales platform for the public and closed user groups such as travel agents hoteliers and group organisers.
The main question is - Can Drupal cope with this? Secondly, what other technologies would be needed? (There's MySQL or similar, and I presume PHP but is there anything else / better worth looking at?) The web facing front end will undergo considerable changes in design during its lifetime so a flexible theme creator (Omega?) may be useful.
A bit of background - If I can produce quite quickly a "proof of concept" model this will take over from an existing outsourced development that is trying to shoehorn our specific requirements into an existing framework. It is not going to plan and whilst it will get there, the amount of compromises maybe too much.
On a personal front, I am come from a database background - xBase to Oracle and a lot of what's in between, with a grounding in various old school programming languages and some HTML but not PHP / Java / Java script, and my graphic design is atrocious. I would be looking to lead the development and oversee the project, learning Drupal and the associated technologies on the way. One of the key problems with the current development is that I am not able to "see" underlying data which makes it difficult to be assured that the system is doing what should!
I would be most grateful for any advice or experience of creating similar projects - I can be contacted via this discussion thread or directly via david.haig@glentonholidays.com.
Many thanks in advance for your help
David Haig
Comments
Drupal can easily handle all
Drupal can easily handle all this, but there will be substantial custom development needed and I'm not sure whether Drupal will be right for you, quoting from your original post:
'One of the key problems with the current development is that I am not able to "see" underlying data which makes it difficult to be assured that the system is doing what should!'
Drupal has a unique way of doing things and if you're not familiar with Drupal I don't see that you'll be able to see the underlying data. Therefore you might be better off with a different system or framework especially due to the custom development needed.
Hi, I'd agree with
Hi,
I'd agree with intrafusion. While Drupal could certainly power something like this, if you're unfamiliar with Drupal, a complex custom build isn't a great place to start learning.
I'd be inclined, in your position, to go with an alternative web application framework / a system which best leverages the skills already available to you. You could consider using drupal for the content managed side of things and integrating that, to the degree necessary, with your custom web app.
It would be a different matter if you were contracting an experienced drupal team, and they were building the custom system to meet your functional requirements, but as I understand it that is not the approach you're considering.
Hi Makemineatriple, thanks
Hi Makemineatriple, thanks for getting back to me.
I would agree with you that I haven't the skills to build this myself - which is one of the reasons we went with another system to start with - and would certainly be looking to work with one or more seasoned developers to translate the business logic into a fully fledged application. But at the same time the control freak in me would want to understand as much of the coding as possible, learning the various technologies as we go.
And part of the reason for this is that the business rules are forever changing - and these changes may be relatively trivial on a database level such as adding a boolean field for overheads to be costed per passenger or per tour - but I would need to be able to make the appropriate changes to the programme code (and know where to look to make the changes) to integrate this without having to call in the specialist.
However, I am open to any advice on alternative frameworks that would have less of a steep learning curve, but as I said before, this won't be a one man development.
Cheers,
David
Thank you Intrafusion for
Thank you Intrafusion for your prompt reply.
I'm aware that this will be a substantially custom project and my interest in Drupal really stems from having a stable and mature framework/foundation that can handle the nitty gritty of the web environment and the CMS, together with the availability of modules that are already available for common tasks.
My mentioning the inability of being able to 'see' the underlying data in the existing development stems from not being given access to the core database - which means I can't follow the data flows through the system. By instigating a new project, I would hope that I would be able to define the MySQL schema for the holiday system and have access to the data via SQL tools, with Drupal acting as the interface to the web applications and handling its own schema. However if Drupal doesn't function in this way, I may well need to look elsewhere.
Can you recommend some reading on Drupal and MySQL (or other RDMS) or even another framework that might be more suitable?
Cheers
David
OK well Drupal is not
OK well Drupal is not database dependent (to a certain extent) and should run on MySQL 5.0.15 or higher with PDO, PostgreSQL 8.3 or higher with PDO, SQLite 3.3.7 so schemas are defined within modules rather than within the database (there is nothing stopping you creating schemas in the database, but if Drupal doesn't know about them you cannot use some of the Drupal database functions like drupal_write_record, etc.)
You probably want to have a look at https://drupal.org/developing/api/schema
I'm not the best person to ask about alternatives as I've been developing with Drupal for over 5 years and don't use anything else
Thanks again Intrafusion,
Thanks again Intrafusion, that makes things clearer. I had imagined that much of the database interaction would be done from PHP rather than core Drupal and I can see why it possibly isn't the way to go
I will read through the link and thank you once again for your help.
Cheers,
David
Call commerce guys
While they will have an obvious bias, I would encourage you to call/email http://commerceguys.com (disclosure, my company is a partner)
They'll likely be able to give you a more in-depth discussion about this project and I know they've assisted other people with projects very similar to what you've described and, if desired, would recommend a few of their implementation partners to assist you. If they don't feel the project could be successfully completed with your parameters, I would trust that they would still offer a fair assessment.
I would concur with the other posters that a large project like this is not one to take on yourself without previous Drupal experience, however, it sounds like you'd be more of a technical oversight and ongoing maintenance/improvements rather than the primary implementor. With that in mind, if you're willing and able to learn enough drupal (and get some outside expertise for the primary implementation), then I don't think there is as much a reason to choose something completely bespoke.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Thanks for the advice Ryan, I
Thanks for the advice Ryan, I will contact commerceguys as a few people have mentioned them.
Cheers,
David
Call commerce guys
double post
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software