Daniel see in-line below...
Sohodojo Jim wrote:
I don't know your specific business/organization requirements, however it sounds like you might be at the wrong level of "modeling granularity" when mapping your customer-schools to Organic Groups.
Perhaps a
multi-site configuration would be more appropriate, each school with its
own
site.
I'm open to alternatives, but I would be surprised if multi-site was the right solution. We are not making school websites, and most of the content of our website is independent of any given school.
For a multi-site solution to work, the first thing I'd need is a really easy way to add sites which inherit all the modules and configuration from the main site. I don't know enough about multi-site to have an opinion on this.
That's a pretty good description of what multi-site does and why it is a great feature of Drupal.
As to OG/subgroups as a mapping for school/class, you've boxed yourself into an OG-based solution (which is a constraint as much as it
is a
potential solution).
Why do you say that I've boxed myself? I haven't even installed the OG module. I am investigating OG, that is all.
I'm not saying you have boxed yourself in. Rather that every system/domain modeling decision you make is a combination of pluses/minuses, strengths/weaknesses, etc. There are always many ways to achieve a desired goal. As long as you get where you want, one can be as good as another. The challenge with an applied real world system is that you rarely have a full and unchanging set of requirements at the beginning. Design choices that you make early on will determine if you have the flexibility to evolve a system or have to face wholesale redesign and development later on. Again, all these things are trade-off and decisions to weigh given time, resources, budget, etc.
There are MANY ways that you can model/map a part-subpart system in Drupal. OG-subgroups is just one somewhat obvious one. But I am sure that folks on this list will contribute many other
ideas.
Can you name one?
I don't know your requirements enough to be too specific... But in general the CCK, Chaos Toolkit, Views, Panels, one or another of the Profile/User-account enhancing modules, Taxonomy module, the various flavors of access control modules, etc. all provide a huge number of ways to implement a system that meets your requirements. Also, I am in no way ruling out OG. Rather, if multi-site is figured into your platform, then Schools are Sites, and Classes are Organic Groups, thereby avoiding the OG/subgroups issue while also giving each school its own site-level world to evolve.
My original point was more to suggest that you consider multi-site as an aspect of your solution design rather than jump right to OG/subgroups as an implementation. I don't know enough about your actual requirements to be more specific than this.
--Sohodojo Jim--