Question

Implementation of a standard archive process in ASP.Net MVC. Backend SQL Server 2005

We’ve an existing web app built in MVC. We’ve an Entity “Claim” and it has some child entities like ClaimDetails, Files, etc… A pretty standard setup in DB. Each entity has its own table and are linked via FK. Now, we need to have an “Archive” feature in web app which will allow admin to archive a Claim and its child entities. An archived Claim shud become readonly when visited again.

Here’re some points on which I need your valued opinion –

1. To keep it simple and scalable (for a few million records) for now we plan to simply add a bit field “Archived” to the Claim table in db.
   And change the behavior accordingly in the web app.

2. We’ve a ‘Manage claim’ page which renders a bunch of diff views for Claim and its child entities. Now, for a readonly view we can either
   use the same views or have a separate set of views. What do you
   suggest?

3. At controller level, we can identify archived claim and select which view to render.

4. At model level, though it’d be great to be able to use the same model used for Manage Claim – but it might not get us the “text” of
   some lookup fields. For example, Claim.BrandId is rendered as a
   dropdown in Manage claim (requires only BrandId) but for readonly view
   we need ‘BrandText’.

5. Any existing ref or architecture level example would be great.

Here’s my prev SO post but its more about db level changes: Design a process to archive data (SQL Server 2005)

Thank you.

Answer 1

I ended up using a duplicate of the existing view with some edits and archive specific changes. I was able to use the same backend model and data fetch structure in a different action.

My entity table has an archived flag which helps identify the status so the rest of the fetch implementation stays the same only a new view (mostly replicated) and a new action (replicated from the existing one) got me the archived view.