I design and write sophisticated, database-driven business software in areas as diverse as transport logistics to sales order systems.
My speciality has become the development of autonomous systems which link directly or indirectly to other systems, typically legacy applications. All of my systems to date have been desktop applications on local area networks so I have tended to use Microsoft Access with heavy use of Visual Basic as a front-end with a variety of databases for the backend including MySql and SQL Server. I also find Access extremely powerful in linking to Excel and extracting to Excel. Many business managers are reluctant to part with their treasured Excel spreadsheets so I provide a front-end solution which will validate and check the input of data - or gather data from multiple sources - and then export in a user-defined format to an Excel spreadsheet.
However, I am redesigning much of my software in Web2Py and moving towards browser-based systems, in keeping with the latest software trends and technology.
I have wide experience in software development and will use whatever software platform will suit the application.
Every software developer dreams of designing and marketing systems which will sell in hundreds. The reality is that there are so many established systems available which are mature products and performing well that generic niches are few and far between.
Hence customised software tends to remain so individually tweaked that it can only be used in the company which commissioned it. However, in the last couple of years I have been attempting to build into the design a generic core of functionality which can be offered to vertical markets with the proviso that some input screens and reports are still available for individual modifications. This bypasses the sensitive issue of competitive business practices being built into the software. With clever database design and the correct relationships being built in to the business logic for the vertical market the core functions of the business regarding data input will be generally the same.
Hence customised software tends to remain so individually tweaked that it can only be used in the company which commissioned it. However, in the last couple of years I have been attempting to build into the design a generic core of functionality which can be offered to vertical markets with the proviso that some input screens and reports are still available for individual modifications. This bypasses the sensitive issue of competitive business practices being built into the software. With clever database design and the correct relationships being built in to the business logic for the vertical market the core functions of the business regarding data input will be generally the same.