DATABASE DEVELOPMENT & SUPPORT
We offer bespoke database solutions for up to 30 staff. Recently we have begun to offer web access portals to these bespoke databases, if required.
We recommend a commitment to continuous improvement wherever possible so that your database grows and changes as your business grows and changes.
Ongoing Database Projects
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Tea Trading database for a tea broker with 10 staff
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A Fine Painting Stock and Image Management and Sales System, accessible across two London galleries for an art dealer with 30 staff (three other art dealers use our database solutions)
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Member management database for a livery company with 10 staff. We are currently working with a new partner on a new website for them which will have a seamless interface between the website and the in-house database (three other livery companies use our database solutions)
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A fleet maintenance management database for an offshore shipping company with the ability for ship captains to access the database and record maintenance activity via a web interface (10 ships, three head office staff)
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A Baptist Church Trust uses a DSys Plus bespoke database to manage their members, donations, Gift Aid and register of churches
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A health contributary fund uses a DSys Plus bespoke database to manage their members database
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A publishing company uses a bespoke DSys Plus database to manage their ABC reporting of circulation
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A healthcare manufacturer uses two DSys Plus bespoke databases to model and analyse delivery costs of imaging material and manage the packaging design process for imaging material (five users)
Microsoft Office and the DSys Plus development environment
We use Microsoft Access as the principal development platform, which offers a number of advantages.
As a very well established product from the world’s leading provider of business software, it remains the ideal method for developing sophisticated bespoke databases for small numbers of users.
With its built-in links to other Office products - specifically Word, Excel and Outlook - our systems have streamlined mail-merge facilities, together with automatically generated emails and spreadsheets.
We do not recommend the use of Runtime versions of Access databases. System problems are more likely to occur, particularly when interfacing with other software products, and the resolution of those problems becomes harder owing to the closed nature of the database software.
This approach means the source code for the database software is always available on the PCs at client sites.
Since Microsoft Access and its programming language Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) are very widely used, client investment in developed software is not in any way tied to a particular supplier.
For more heavyweight databases, we use Microsoft SQL Server as the backend; if web access is required we use Alpha Anywhere to provide this functionality onto a SQL Server back end.
We have recently partnered with SyncCreative to deliver database web access using Microsoft.net.