Informix-SQL (SE) on the cloud with WinTerm thin clients

I have several customers, each running a customized v开发者_JS百科ersion of my ISQL (SE) desktop app. I would like to replace their desktop app with thin client WinTerm's, connecting to the cloud (My ISQL app on an SuSE Open or RedHat server). If this can be done, I would like for each customer to use one standardized version of my app to simplify updates and support. However, I'm not sure what's the best way to design the database. Should each customer have their own database.dbs (DBPATH=) or is there a better design?

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You have two options, one of them that you've already considered:

1. Each customer has their own database with the standard name.
2. Each customer has their own database with a separate name for each.

The advantage of option 1 is that your existing code would work substantially unchanged; you'd simply have to ensure that the setting of DBPATH is correct for each customer. The downside is that you need to create a separate directory for each customer too. However, this has its merits; you can probably more easily keep Customer A from seeing any of the files generated by Customer B (and vice versa) if each customer has their own separate home directory, and their database is located in that directory.

The advantage of option 2 is that you can put all the customers' databases in a single directory. As mentioned, this is apt to make it easier for Customer A to see stuff that he should not see that belongs to Customer B. You would also have to ensure that you override the default database name every time you run a command - whether that's sperform or sacego or anything else.

Between the two, I would go with option 1 (separate databases with common name in different directories), with rigid walls between customers. Each customer would have their own user name and group, and the permissions on the directories would avoid public access of any sort. They can all still use a single INFORMIXDIR and your associated forms and reports.