Hello All,

I am new to DNN  and I'm trying to figure to out what DNN can buy our company. I was wondering how people actually store their data when using DNN. Are they storing it in DNN's database or are they using an external datasource? Do sites using DNN typically pull from a database to display info or do users use web services or some other mechanism? What is the preferred way of doing this using DNN? Any thoughts on these topics or articles anyone can point me to would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I have an application that pushes external data to a database "A", would it be considered good practice to give a customer scripts based on database "A" and have them run the scripts against the DNN database created with the install? Or do people tend to leave the DNN database alone, without modification, and just have the data pulled from their external database?

Thanks in advance.

Mona Ali, t would be helpful if you could describe a bit more about your use case here. Most DNNers install modules that perform specific functions (blogs, forums, wikis, photo galleries) that add objects to DNN's SQL database. Information for that module can be combined with the core data (userid for example) and stored in those tables.

The module installation process reads a manifest file that tells the installer what SQL scripts to run (and those create tables and procedures and also upgrade (alter) objects as the module increases or changes it functionality.

You may consider porting your application into a module so it can be easily installed and managed through DNN. If you search the wiki here or Google 'DNN Module Development' (there are some books on it too) you'll find a lot of great information.

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Steven Webster
Manager, Community Platform
F5 Networks, DevCentral