Half Way House for Enterprise Designing/Developing

[leej]

Hi everyone,
I have a question for all you lovely SME Sellerdeck developers out there. We are in the process of being commissioned to do a redesign/redevelopment project for a potential new client. They are using Sellereck Enterprise V11 on SQL 2008 R2 Server.

We have only developed for the Sellerdeck Access DB solution in the past, so this is a new frontier for us. The client sent over a snapshot for us to look through however it states that we can't import it as it was created via a SQL Database, which was no real surprise.

What I'm curious about is the setup a small agency, such as ourselves, has to introduce internally to be able to offering a design/development service offering for Enterprise. The two core parts I think I need are a) Sellerdeck Enterprise [£5K] and b) Microsoft SQL Server [£???]. Would that be right or does SQL come within the cost of Enterprise?

1. Does Sellerdeck offer a Sellerdeck Designer SQL version for Enterprise, because I don't see how we could invest £5K for the starting price? What do businesses that use Enterprise do with regards to the look and feel of the site? Internal design team? Possibly?

2. Do you have to have a stand alone work station for Enterprise as I believe you would'nt be able to run two versions of V11 Desginer/Enterprise on the same system, regardless of the DB that is being used? Can anyone confirm this?

I may be ranting or even completely missing the point, as there is no call for it, but surely if there was a lower end Enterprise solution for agencies (similar to Designer) where we could develop for Enterprise then I'm positive that we could push more of our clients onto Enterprise for its scalablity? Anyone at Sellerdeck care to comment?

I've looked around the community and havent really found many topics relating to this so I'd be interested to hear what others have to say. Thanks in advance for any answers relating to this.

[fergusw]

Lee,

Follow these steps:

1. Get the client to make a snapshot of the site.
2. Get then to license a new, temp site and import that snapshot
3. Get them to use the "Convert to Access" option in SellerDeck Enterprise
4. Get them to snapshot and send to you

You can then import this snapshot, work on it etc.
When ready, simply reverse the process with your snapshot i.e. import into temp site, "Convert to SQL" then export and importing into Live site!

[leej]

Hi Fergus,
Thanks for getting in touch. Way ahead of you however nothing is ever that easy. I supplied Sellerdeck a version to convert however they came back with the following response:

I have just tried converting the database to Access, however, becuase the site has tables created in SQL for 3rd party plugins, SellerDeck cannot convert it do Access. Basically, sites which have custom tables in, created in SQL, cannot be converted to Access, as SellerDeck cannot convert a table it doesn't know into Access causing it to fail. (APB_SelectedSections" for example)

The only way around this, would be to install the SQL server 2008 R2 trial on your PC, so that you can import their snapshot. Instructions can be found below:

This unfortunatley leaves me with the task of setting it up myself to work with the snapshot direct.

[fergusw]

Well, there's your answer

The custom tables are clearly mucking the standard process up.
I'd look at getting them to make a db copy in MS SQL, strip the offending tables out of this copy, link SellerDeck to the "clean" SQL db and then run through the process outlined above. A real pain, I agree, but I'm not sure of another way round it.

The alternative would be design snapshots and copy/pasting through remote sessions to implement design work....

[Jan]

You can use the customers license for development I believe, then you can install the developers version of SQL server on your PC (unsupported but I have used it in the past - ihttp://www.amazon.co.uk/MICROSOFT-E32-00941-Server-Developer-Edition/sim/B007ZKW786/2 and then the snapshot should import.

Having reread your post, it looks like Sellerdeck have already pointed you at a trial version which might be a better way to go because you will then have the same version as your customer, might not be the best though if you are going to offer support for the site.

Regards,

[leej]

Fergus, Jan,
Many thanks for your input on this. One final question. If I go down the MySQL setup route will the Enterprise edition of Sellerdeck have to run off a seperate machine or can it coexist on the same PC with my Sellerdeck Designer?

[malbro]

Fergus, Jan,
Many thanks for your input on this. One final question. If I go down the MySQL setup route will the Enterprise edition of Sellerdeck have to run off a seperate machine or can it coexist on the same PC with my Sellerdeck Designer?

Yes you can run SQL server on the same machine, BTW Microsoft SQL server is not MySQL that is a different database.

[NormanRouxel]

If you want a quick route to make design changes on an Access machine and transfer them to an Enterprise one then try this:

On access machine, make a Partial Site Design snapshot as usual.

When the design snapshot is finished, there will also be a file Act_DesignExport.txt in your Site folder.

That file can be imported into the Enterprise system via File / Import.

You can also extract the Act_DesignExport.txt file from the .ACD file by exploring it with a good Zipfile manager like WinRAR.

This only deals with Library changes. Supporting files, images, etc will need to me manually copied over.