Multi-hour server meeting. Wayne, John, and I were on the meeting. Our first topic was email servers and options. I pitched 4 options. Wayne came up with a fifth option. Here they are - in general:

1. Stay with Newtek on the same server and try to update code to help make it more stable. Currently on a shared server for email functionality.
2. Stay with Newtek and just upgrade the shared ColdFusion server to a newer version. Basically, request a plan change and switch boxes (upgrade servers).
3. Switch over to Hostek and use their email services either as a shared server or a VPS for SmarterMail.
4. Full custom and we setup the server, the services, and the API socket connections. There are a number of unknowns here.
5. Switch over to Google workspace and use that as our email server. This was Wayne's idea. We chatted about ideas, options, pricing and what not. He is going to run some experiments using one of our other domain names that we have to do some testing.

After we got done talking about possible email options, we started talking about the datasource project and options that we have there. This discussion took quite a bit of time and felt like we weren't making much progress until towards the end of the discussion. We were talking about tough situations like payees and users being bridged between corporations. We went over the need for GUID's or globally unique id numbers. We also talked about tables like customers and part categories where we use the auto generated id as the main primary field. We also talked about other tables where we allow duplicates based on a multiple column primary key. For example: Say deposits or PO's. We let the system create an auto id number that we don't use (auto number for the transactional ids) but then we do a special corp id and main deposit number or corp id and main PO number as the sub combos. Ideally, we'd like to make all of the tables so that they could have that multiple column primary key or key indexes to help keep the data separated.

Lots and lots of talk about tables, options, and details. Toward the end, I think that all of us had a better idea of what we are up against and how to tackle the project. That is awesome. Our next plan is to have Wayne play with some things and see what it would take to update and merge a couple of tables. Basically, we are going to start running some scenarios and testing experiments. We talked quite a bit about UID's (unique identifiers) and even converting them into numeric values to help with indexing, sorting, and such. Most of it came down to adding in an additional layer to the database where needed. It's not needed everywhere, just in certain places and that was good to see. Progress.

As a goal, it would be super cool to get the full database all mapped out and fully documented. Things like data definitions, primary keys, foreign keys, key indexes, combo fields, etc. As a fun side note, if we flip over to a unique id type system, the main work will be on the insert code (putting things into the database). Then making sure that each select, or view query uses that unique id (a real UID or a combo/multi column primary key) in the joins and where clause filters. Once again, good progress on the datasource project. It may end up being a combo of both new datasource names and better unique identifiers to allow us to mix and bled tables, datasources, and data as needed.

Next, we switched over to session variables and session management options. We talked about setting up global session variables, centralized place to manage that, and moving things into more of a session object with methods, classes, and functions. Get it all in one place vs having it in-line code on multiple different pages. All part of standardizing things and maturing code wise.

Wayne reported that he and Eric got the local docker image running on Eric's Mac with no problems. We talked about some image, media/content, and local paths that need some help and loving. Then at the end of the meeting, after Wayne had left, John and I went over a number of new pages that need to be updated with a more modern look and feel. Long, but a good meeting today.