Hello, I need some advice about the pros and cons of a challenge I am facing.
I have a requirement to present financial data via a web interface.
The data is held on an as/400 running JD Edwards and the database is DB2.
We would like to be able to extract data from JDE and present it via a web interface generated by Domino. There will be no requirement to update the data via the web interface - our clients will be querying it only. In all likelyhood, they will just be accessing a series of pre defined views and tables.
What would be the best approach to manage this inegration? Should we look to use a simple ODBC connector, LEI, DECS, or something else?
Subject: Advice required - External db connections?
If you’re just going to pull existing tables and view data, I imagine I’d use DECS to pull the data in automatically. Easy to set up, and takes care of itself reasonably well once it gets going. If you’re going to perform ad hoc queries, the answer might be different, but I’m not sure what I’d do.
Subject: RE: Advice required - External db connections?
That depends on many factors – how much data you have total, how you would go about finding the data to be presented to a particular web user, security requirements, etcetera. It seems likely that you could use DECS virtual fields (aka realtime notes); store a Notes key document containing information associated with a customer, use readers fields to control access to that document, and virtual fields to fill in all the extra information looked up with the key field(s) stored in the Notes document. Multiple VF activities can be applied to the same Notes form, in case you need to pull information from multiple tables, and you can use some fields you look up as keys to other lookups. You should also be able to handle multiple return values from the same key and present them in table form in the Notes document, but don’t quote me on that (I know you can with LEI, not certain about DECS).
Like I said, whether this is appropriate for you depends on your specific needs. You might want to bring in an expert in the area to analyze your requirements.