Structuring of large application

[Damien]

Hey guys,

I'm currently developing a reasonably sized application, which is
expected to grow in the future.

At the centre is the User login facility - everyone using the site must
log in. Thereafter, various different services may be available to the
user, dependant on how they are set up - there are currently two
services available:

Creditor Services
User Management

Because there are a lot of tie-ups between the services, and a lot of
shared data, all of the data resides in a single database (but
service-specific information is stored under separate schemas). A
single data-access layer provides access to the database, and the
services share session management facilities.

At present, because of the large number of tie-ups between the
services, the system is structured as a single monolythic web
application.

I tried to break it down a bit by placing service specific pages within
subdirectories. However, ASP.NET couldn't seem to cope with this, and
couldn't manage to create/find the code-behind associated with these
pages.

Even if I split the services out into completely separate web
applications, I still want them to be able to share session information
and there are a fair number of common pages/common code between them.

How would you guys suggest I go about restructuring, before the next
service comes along and makes the job even harder?

Ideally I would like the common login facility (and initial service
selection) pages to reside at the root of the site, and then for each
service to reside within a (virtual) directory below that.
Any pointers?

 

[Brandon Potter]

Have you thought about possibly writing the business logic & data layer in
one application as a web service, and writing the UI in your regular web
app?

Sometimes people will assign a GUID to a user at the start of a session and
keep their current session's login information in a database, and simply
pass the GUID along to another application when they "jump over the wall",
so to speak. Again your central login database could be another web services
app.

Brandon