A carefully thought-out database design forms the foundation for future success.
Databases depend upon keys to store, sort and compare records. If you’ve been around databases for a while, you’ve probably heard about many different types of keys – primary keys, candidate keys, and foreign keys. When you create a new database table, you’re asked to select one primary key that will uniquely identify records stored in that table.
We specialize in providing custom database design solutions using: MS Access, FileMaker Pro, Servoy and MySQL. We also provide database development and consulting services for use on the Web, office networks, or just a single workstation.
Two-Tier or n-Tier?
What's best for your situation? Two-tier, three-tier or n-tier databases? Find
out here!
Many custom programs have a break even point of less than 6 months. With financing, sometimes the break even point is measured in weeks. Can you really afford to keep putting off the decision?
MS Access:
Microsoft Access provides users with one of the simplest and most flexible DBMS solutions on the market today. Regular users of Microsoft products will enjoy the familiar Windows “look and feel” as well as the tight integration with other Microsoft Office family products. An abundance of wizards lessen the complexity of administrative tasks and the ever-present Microsoft Office Helper (you know… the paper clip!) is available for those who care to use it.
Microsoft Access also provides native support for the World Wide Web. Posting data to the web is a breeze. If you have a formatted report that you would like to share with Internet or Intranet users, you can simply export it to an HTML file and publish it to your organization's web server. For those with more complex tastes, the advanced features of Access 2000 provide interactive data manipulation capabilities to web users. Microsoft's TechNet provides an in-depth discussion of Data Access pages.
Finally, Microsoft Access is complete without mentioning it's capability to tightly integrate with SQL Server, Microsoft's professional database server product. If you're in an organization that utilizes SQL Server, you'll be pleased to learn that you can retrieve, manipulate and work with the data stored on your organization's database server within the Microsoft Access environment. For more on this, view Microsoft's page on SQL Server/Office integration.
FileMaker Pro:
FileMaker Pro databases are popular among both Macintosh and Windows business users. This easy-to-administer platform ships out of the box with business templates for the beginning database administrator.
It offers an intuitive interface and hides many of the complexities inherent in database management. It's also ODBC compliant and offers some integration capability with Microsoft Office.
MySQL:
What about features? MySQL actually supports most of the functionality you’ve come to expect in a commercial RDBMS. It ensures that transactions comply with the ACID Model, allows the building of indexes, supports standard data types, and allows for database replication, among other features.
If you’re a heavy user of web applications, you’ll be pleased to learn that MySQL meshes perfectly with the Perl Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) dynamic web development language. If you’re a Microsoft IIS user, it works quite well with Active Server Pages (ASP), as well. In fact, if your ASP code is ANSI SQL-compliant, you may be able to simply plug and play a MySQL server into your production environment very easily!
Call or email us and we will be happy to provide you with a price quote, customized to your specific database needs. (we are normally quite a bit less expensive than our competitors!)