Hello,
I´m sort of new here at Drupal, but I´ve already tested it, and found it amazing.
I´m working in a web application that wants to administrate apartaments [and maybe car´s] rents.
Now, I´ve searched the forums, but still don´t know if Drupal can manage the following:

#1. Create accounts for people that has several apartments to administrate. Those apartments usually are form separate owners, and have obviously different tenant´s.
I want tenat´s and owners aswell to be able to communicate with the administrators, and sort of control what they are doing [so they could actually see all stuff that´s going on]. I think that OG can help with that and some sort of taxonomy control per user.

#2. Manage administrator´s accountability (this is the most important stuff that I cannot really know if Drupal can handle). I want they to manage each single apartament´s accounts:
Knowing what aumont each tenant is paying per month, and if they are late in their payments to add an interest rate (wich could be different in each case, because some contracts could apply 1% of monthy interest rate where others apply 2% or 3%). Maybe some contracts could even apply different ways of calculating interest rates).
Some contracts could add a fee to be applied in some cases, or some extra charges, that should be calculated too, with the possibility to add or take off certain items.

#3. The application should permit each administrator to have n number of accounts, and to have n number of administrators, so it should be scalable. I think Drupal doesn´t have a problem here.

#4. According to the legislation of each country, it could be other items to consider for the final sum of each tenant to pay, so each month could be a different sum to pay, for each apartment, a different calculation.

Now, I´ve thought largely about the database and language to apply to this, and finally decided that MySQL and PHP are the better ones.

My issues begins when I decide to start with raw PHP and writting the application by hand, or using a framework, like Zend or Symfony (or maybe don´t using PHP at all and use python because Django seems excellent).
I think that I don´t have to reinvent the weel here, so, maybe using a framework could be better.

I consider Drupal as a framework and not as a CMS application. And I like it very much.
I know that there aren´t contributed modules that can do all that I´ve named, BUT, I would like to know if Drupal can support something like this in case I decided to create a module from scratch.

One thing that I have to put into consideration, besides the limitations of using a framework in the first place, is the Drupal versioning.

Am I going to put a lot of work into something that next year cannot work under Drupal 7? (or 8, or whatever). How can I manage my own versioning when Drupal changes so often? I´m just starting to understand Drupal 5 with the excellent Pro Drupal Development book, when Drupal 6 caes out and changes A LOT of things!

Hope to hear you thoughts about this!

THANKS!!!!!

Anita

Comments

gforce301’s picture

Hopefully others will respond to this also. IMHO Drupal can do all that you are asking and more. You are right in your assessment that there are probably not many if any contributed modules that will handle your custom requirements. You will have to write modules to achieve what you need, but drupal can do all of this with your help :).

To address your concern about newer drupal versions:
I go with the philosophy "if it's not broken do not fix it". So basically if you design and implement a site in Drupal X.X that site has a natural lifespan that has nothing to do with drupal. Updates/upgrades within a particular major version of drupal are all you should need. I would not switch to a new major version until the site has reached the end of it's normal lifespan OR it needs a major reworking of it's basic functionality. It is only at that point that I would rework the site into a new major version of drupal.

AnaG’s picture

I was a bit hesitant about the administration management part about Drupal handling calculations between nodes, and thus implementing an "economical" or "accountability" application. Drupal handles in a terrific way nodes that are meant to be text, image and video, in short, all sort of multimedia content. But I had certain doubts about handling an application that should do math like *all the time*. And frankly, I needed some drupal-expert opinions before putting myself to work, because it will take much time and effort.

But then again, Drupal has many, many built core and contributed modules that do much of the things that I need, so if I implement an application based on it, there´s so much work already done. (Authentication, user management like profiles and permissions, taxonomy, organic groups, even a hosting module that I´ve recently discovered to handle several installations at once).

One thing that made me doubt about the possibility of Drupal of handling what I want (and made me ask about it here :), is that I didn´t saw many calculus applications, nor many websites destined to do that sort of thing.
I´ve saw newspaper sites, community sites, and all kind of sites but none of them handles numbers, nor are they sort of "accountability" applications.

Thanks again!
Anita

gforce301’s picture

Well in the end it's all php. You can write code to calculate anything you want. Modules have the ability to manage and maintain there own sets of tables in the database. With that the possibilities to store, retrieve and calculate information to your hearts content are endless :). Add to that the ability to "publish" that information for use by other modules and the core system itself via the API and hooks and I have never found a problem I could not solve using drupal.

As you get a little farther into your design and implementation keep asking questions. People here will help. Ask more specifically how to do things and we can give more specific answers.

WorldFallz’s picture

just a little pointer-- for calculations the http://drupal.org/project/computed_field and http://drupal.org/project/views_calc modules are very useful.

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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz

AnaG’s picture

Thank you both guys!!!
I´m really exiting to start with Drupal, and yes, I´ve been watching this community grow through the time, and it´s amazing!!!!! I think you´ve convinced me that Drupal can change the world ;)
THANKS!!!!
Anita