Design question regarding adding data fields on the fly

Question

User-2015678876 posted

I have a web app that is tracking basic medical provider demographica information (name, address, phone). If our client requests us to include gender and DOB as the fields tracked, can this be done on the fly without compiling and publishing my web app? If so, please provide links I can research to make this work.

 

Thanks,  

Answer 1

User-863835478 posted

Are gender and DOB new tracking criteria that have not been included in the initial design of the app?

Answer 2

User-952121411 posted

If our client requests us to include gender and DOB as the fields tracked, can this be done on the fly without compiling and publishing my web app?

 

Wow this could be a tough objective, and without knowing the design of the app it is hard to say for sure, but typically the answer is 'No'.  For the following reasons:

1. You probably need new fields at the UI just to allow entry of these additional fields which would cause some page updates and redeploy.
2. You obviously need the code behind to capture and validate the data.  This also requires a recompile as they are code changes.
3. You probably have some properties or something of the like holding these values either to or from the database that currently do not exist and have to be added in code.  This also would require a recompile.
4. You will need to probably update some SQL Stored procedures to get and store the data and tables columns will have to be added to hold the data.  These (2) tasks do not require a recompile, but if you have to add parameters to a SqlCommand object in code to send to your new stored procedure, then that would require a recompile.

Odds are something in your app will touch on a couple of these points and possibly create the need to recompile and deploy back out to the server.  My guess is you know redeploying will not cause any disruption to the site necessarily, but if you are deploying this packaged to clients I can understand the concern.

Hope this helps!