Database design

Many companies find that they can streamline operations and improve efficiency by implementing work flows in software. We've over a decade of experience in constructing databases for different companies, in domains as diverse as magazine ad management, human resource management, telecoms billing, second-hand deposit sales, and school grading. One of our client's database grows by over a million records per month!

Over the years, the tools we use have evolved. Our first solutions were based on MS Access or Filemaker, but now Open Source, Free Software database solutions are available. Finally, an Oracle-quality, free software enterprise database server is here: PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL offers transactions, relational integrity, user-defined functions and datatypes, stored procedures in several different embedded languages, even replication... Everything a database programmer could hope for, in an Open Source package.

This means that your data is secure for years and years. No one can stop PostgreSQL, since the source code is openly available to thousands of programmers worldwide. You'll never worry that your database software supplier will go out of business – the database belongs to the community of those who use it.

By using open standards, you can be sure that you'll never be forced to upgrade your system when it's not in your own business interest. You'll also have all the source code and details for your own application and server software – because why should your own business data be held hostage by your software supplier?

And all your data can be accessed using standard Internet tools, from any communications platform where a secure browser is available: Macintosh, Linux, Windows – even from a Web-enabled cell phone!

Designing and building a dedicated company database isn't a simple task. That's why the development requires several phases before the system can be fully deployed: analysis, data modeling, prototyping, and testing. The development time frame involved is measured in months, the usable lifetime for your company will be measured in decades.