Need help with making a template system

[Valdrin]

Hi all,

Part of a solution I'm working on needs a section to assign students to various projects. Each projects is made up of 1-20 tasks from a list of about 100 tasks.

I have set up the following tables:

Students_Table

Join_Students_Projects_Table

Projects_Table

Join_Taskes_Projects_Table

Tasks_Table

I want the users to create new "Project" records by choosing from a list of predefined templets, and I have thought of three ways to accomplish that task:

1) Just put a template flag field in the "Projects" table and use filtered portals for the list of templates.

2) Create a "Templates" table and store the TaskIDs in repeating fields.

3) Create "Template" table and a child table in which to store the TaskIDs.

So after that long preamble my question is: which of the above methods would you recommend, or Is there a better way to make a template system that I have missed?

Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated.

Val

[comment]

Suppose there is a template called "Project Zoo" and it has three tasks (say TaskIDs 10, 19 and 25). After I have created a new project using this template - will I be allowed to add/delete the project's tasks?

[Valdrin]

Suppose there is a template called "Project Zoo" and it has three tasks (say TaskIDs 10, 19 and 25). After I have created a new project using this template - will I be allowed to add/delete the project's tasks?

Right now the answer is no, you would not be able to add or delete the project's tasks. (The people involved were actually debating that very question at the last meeting. One of them wanted the added versatility of allowing changes, while the other thought that keeping the projects limited to what was in the templates would be easier to manage.)

[comment]

Well, if the other person won, then perhaps you could make it:

Students -< StudentProjects >- Projects >- ProjectTypes -< ProjectTypeTasks >- Tasks

This is assuming that there are no attributes that are specific to a particular Project/Task join.