Assessment of feasibility and weaknesses of Fabrik built web application

[toko]

Hi,

I have two questions ? one concerning the feasibility of my project and the other concerning the scalibility of Fabrik build apps and potential limitations/weaknesses that may arise down the road. Hope you can help.

Feasibility

I would like to know if the Fabrik software can help me with the realization of the following project. So before I start learning Fabrik (and spending numerous hours, days and weeks), I'd like to know if Fabrik and its plugins support the core features of the app, and what are the plugins or additional skills/software I need to accomplish the plan. Here is a short descritpion:

1. Authentication (might already be covered by Joomla ? not sure) which allows every user to register, login and logout. Also capable of password reset and in case user forgets his or her user name. As the user's data is confidendial, the data must be protected from unauthorized access. Besides the user, also a third party (if permission is granted by the admin user) and, of course, the developer can access the data. In addition, let more than one company employee access same account with different login details. But this only if invitited by the admin user.
   
   
2. Possibility for user to add, edit and delete records.
   
   
3. Possibility to design profesisonal looking lists, online forms etc. and embed it nicely in existing joomla template
   
   
4. In a list (or table), display a 'edit' button in the last column to give user access to edit form OR (ideally) allow the user to edit the data directly in the list view (without opening edit form)
   
   
5. In a list (or table), add columns that show calculated data which automatically update in the list view instantaneously when user edits a record
   
   
6. List can be sorted and filtered. For instance, only see records where the date is in between a set period, or only see records which meet a certain condition, e.g. only view sales from a specified sales person
   
   
7. The app must be capable of creating excel, text and pdf files which include static and dynamic information. What I mean is I want to create a text or pdf document that shows pre-written text (create a excel spreadsheet that shows numbers and text, respectively) and set placeholders in different places which are populated with user information from the database by a click of a button. So the app must allow the user to view or download an excel, text or pdf document that not only inlcudes static text or numbers but also includes user information in designated areas, such as name, company address, etc. The generated documents will need to be stored in a list and must be accesible at a later point in time.
   
   
8. Tab structure to easily jump from one list to another list or online form
   
   
9. Data upload not only through form (manual data entry) but also XML and XLS file upload
   
   
10. Capable of sending emails, e.g. to confirm data upload or send reminders a specified number of days before deadline
    
    
11. Capable of comparing data from a record (e.g. planned and actual figures) and flag record when certain condition(s) is/are met (e.g. record get flagged when actual expenses exceed planned expenses by 5 percent)
    
    
12. Capable of uploading any files which can be downloaded by another user
    

Scalability/weaknesses

The web application shall be capable of dealing with up to 1000 users. The app will have a great number of different tables (but <100) which are linked together in the relational database. The number of records (or rows in a table) can be relatively low but also reach between 1 up to 10 Million. Behind this background, I'm asking myself if Fabrik is capable of dealing with big data sets, and if yes, what does this mean for the user experience (speed, etc.). Are there any other weaknesses I should be aware which will only appear once the size of the database or any other parameters exceed a certain threshold? Are there any other limiting factors (such as joomla itself, or any other third-party plugins, server, etc) that can impact the performance of the planned web application?

Thank you for your assistance.

toko

 

[cheesegrits]

Most of that can be done out of the box, some would require a little customizing.

Fabrik performs pretty well with large tables, we automatically apply any indexes we need.

The main issue with Fabrik is that you need to be pro-active in keeping up with updates, and for any kind of compelx app you really need to maintain a sandbox that you do all your update testing on. And be aware that there may not be a simple upgrade path to major new versions.

-- hugh