By Carolina Tiger Rescue on

I plan to overhaul our Carolina Tiger website with Drupal. In our current setup, we have our primary website on a Windows based server (for minimal .Net forms) and our online gift shop on a linux server. I plan to install Drupal and eventually move our primary website to the Linux server, as it already has a security certificate that will be useful.

We need to keep our existing online store, as it already syncs well with our physical location's POS, so moving the store is not a good option.
I'd like to use the store's existing mySQL database for the Drupal installation as well. It seems like this would keep my data far simpler- we already have users that have a login- so finding a way to integrate the store's users with Drupal site users would be ideal. I imagine this would make managing the look of the store easier as well. I'm still learning to use Drupal, so I don't yet have a good understanding of underlying database structure.

  1. Can this be done? Is it advisable?
  2. Can you suggest some good resources to compare Drupal's database structure with the store's structure?
  3. Any pitfalls I should keep in mind?

Gratefully, Amanda

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

Yes it can be done by specifying a table prefix when you install Drupal but I would recommend using a different database. You can not expect to share tables. Drupal provides ways to ingrate with other login systems, details will depend on the existing site.

Carolina Tiger Rescue’s picture

Carolina Tiger Rescue commented

Thanks! I see my options now as

1. Trying to use the same database and verifying that the existing database doesn't use the same table names. This might prevent a little duplicate data, and could cause problems if additional modules try to use the same tables as the original database.

2. As suggested,install Drupal on the same server but in a different database, and look for a way to integrate the logins so that only one password is needed for both the site and the online store.

I'll probably go with the second.