[Sigia-l] Code sharing by multiple portals

[Stefan Schwarzer]

Hi there,

I ask for advice concerning a centralization/decentralization issue for 
Portal development.

We have set up a (Global) data portal, which holds lots of data, and 
displays them as maps, graphs and tables. This portal ( 
http://geodata.grid.unep.ch ) consists of some 50 files (mostly PHP) 
with each some 100 to 1000 lines.

Now, a first start will eventually be made to set-up a national version 
of that Portal. This means that the layout will stay almost the same, 
but the content will differ. But still, here and there some code must 
be changed.

A question coming to my mind by speaking about this regionalization is 
the maintenance issue. If most of the code will be used for the Global 
and the regional/national portals, but some will be changed or added, 
how can a change of code from my/our side (solving a bug, adding a 
function...) be reflected in the other portals too?

The only idea I came up with was to "centralize" the code in a 
database. Each portal would set up its pages by loading different bits 
and pieces of the code through this database. Multiple portals would 
read common codes from the same place, thus enabling a quick update of 
code by changing only once the field in the database. Downside: it 
would probably be a mess to program this...

What do you think? Any experience in similar cases of code-sharing, 
distributed platforms, sites and centralized databses? Comments most 
welcome!

Stef