Guy kolbis

In my previous post "Design Decision: Where to place the admin for your application" I have explained a design decision I had to take. Generally, I was looking for a solution on where to build my application administration.

Alik Levin, suggested that the administration should be placed on a different process (application) from the main process (application). His main motivation is security.

I must admit, usually I would agree with Alik, however there are several more considerations that we must take into account before making a decision:

• Target - Who will use it? Is it for internal usage?  If you will need it for internal usage or for internal engineers, just select the quickest way possible, usually several utils wil do the work, but remember to remove all trace of those feature when deploying the application.
• Type - Is it a product? If so, you need to think about the long run. Think about the administration the same as you would for any other application. I would suggest a different application  that will encapsulate all admin operations.
• Security - Are you building a secured application? Do you consider security as an important aspect? If security is a must, surely you would want to decouple the application from its administration, thus two application must be created, one for the client and another for the admin.
• Connectivity - Do you need the admin to connect the client (to clear the cache, for instance)? If so, it is far more easy to create the admin as a module within the application; You simply gain more control of the features and the connectivity between the client and the admin is high (good). However, if given the time, it is possible to achieve just that event if using two applications. So, if you have the time, using two applications would be better, otherwise a single application is easier.

• Time Budget - Do you have time to build new application? Do you need to build new infrastructure for the admin? Can you reuse the infrastructures? How complicated it it? Can you do it quick and dirty? This is T-H-E question.

Summary

As a thumb rule: Two applications, one for admin and another for the client.

However if you do not have the budget, ask yourself: what is the penalties for not separating it? Think about the long run.