I have an existing SQL database, running say a Sales application with tables of Employees, Companies, Contacts, Orders and Activities. As you might imagine Contacts has a Company foreign key in it and Activities has Company and Contacts and Orders has all of the other 3.

So, now I want to "portalize" it so it may be accessed from the web. Maybe by the salesman to log their activity or maybe by the customer to see the activity in their orders.

I install DNN into the existing SQL database(making sure there are no possible duplicate names first). OK, now where can I go to read about how to extend DNN with existing modules that can be modified or resources that would explain how to write something to allow this multi-relational table scheme to be leveraged in the DNN application? Seems everything I can find out there is single table oriented. TP Modules never link to other tables, configurable lists are never linked table based, the DNN user/security tables never seem to integrate into available modules(obviously I'd want to integrate to control visibility of records by those logging in).

I'm new, see potential with DNN, just don't know where to go with it from here.

Thanks,

Paul

Best way is to specify an objectQualifier for your dotnetnuke install. These prefix's your table with the objectqualified, e.g. DNN_

Each module is a little application in itself, it has access to all the other tables in the database, so I would just join on tot hose tables when your writing your code to retrieve details.

Obviously this only works when you are using a single portal, as your other data is not disected by portal like the other tables.

Yes, this is for good reason, decoupling. Most modules may go into environments where those tables might not exist.

The configurable lists, are just away to cut down on the number of tables required, and by there nature are not linked in the normal sense of, CategoryID, CountryID etc, but rather ListID, EntryID.

Normally you control this in code, by role checks. So dependant on what role they are in the portal, depends on what record they see. This is not normally done for DotNetNuke in the database, as a single account is used to access the database.

I hope this helps..

OK, a quick followup.....