Technologies
We like technology. We probably wouldn't be in this business otherwise. But we recognise that technology has a purpose, and that purpose is certainly not to use it for its own sake!
Technology is used for business purpose, and this mantra is at the forefront of everything we do. You identify a business requirement, you explain it to us, we use our expertise to work out which technology tools and products will best perform that function for you.
Having said that, you expect us to be strong on technology, and we certainly want to deliver in that area. For technology not to be an obstacle, we need to master it. This is what technologies we've used in the past and that we are very comfortable with:
- Oracle suite: there aren't many tools and products in the Oracle space that we haven't used. We've deployed projects that had an Oracle database (up to and including 11g) at the back-end, accessed either with Oracle Java modules; or a .NET C# built website; or a VB6 application; or a MS Access front database. We can install, maintain, develop and administer Oracle databases on Windows, NT, UNIX (SunSolaris, HP-UX, AIX) and Linux (SuSE, RedHat, Oracle Linux, ...). We are Oracle Certified in database administration and development.
- While we're on the subject of Oracle, we've used many features that the Oracle database does well: table partitioning; SQL statements analysis and optimising; use of DataGuard (i.e. standby database) for rapid recovery; RMAN-based backup strategy (with incremental and differential backups); Enterprise Manager database monitoring; RAC installations (where you have several instances on different machines connecting you to the one physical database files, here again ensuring close-to-100% availability).
- We've installed and configured Oracle Application Server 9iAS or 10g to connect to Oracle databases, JD Edwards systems, or simply as part of the Oracle e-Business Suite.
- To conclude on all this Oracle technology: we've used OWB 10g (Oracle Warehouse Builder) to build data warehouses from transactional databases. We've also used tools like Sagent,Business Objects or Oracle's own ODI (Oracle Data Integrator) to put data in these warehouses and tools like Oracle Discoverer (versions 3 and 4) and Oracle Business Intelligence to report on the warehoused data.
- We've also used some of the offerings from companies newly acquired by Oracle: Lodestar's MDM (Meter Data Management) and Oracle Utilities CC&B (Customer Care & Billing), acquired from SPL in 2007.
- On the development side, we've developed and deployed applications using Oracle's XML libraries and materialized views (equivalent to SQL Server's snapshots). We've also used extensively Oracle's SMTP packages and countless more features enabling an Oracle environment to be deployed as part of a SaaS application (Software-as-a-Service) and web architectures.
- LAMP/WAMP: think a MySQL database on your database server; an Apache webserver; web pages written in HTML/XML with JavaScript and PHP scripts to display, modify and get/put data from/to the pages; all hosted on either Linux or Windows. This is how many websites are implemented. We can do this for you, and we have experience in all the layers of this architecture.
- If you have a small database and you fancy a nice front-end to it, we can quickly put together a Microsoft Access application. We've done things like timesheet systems; front-end to more "beefy" databases; generally small applications in Access, and we've done it in Access 2.0, Access 95, Access 97, Access 2003 and Access 2007! Only the last 2 will probably be of any interest to you, and we are well versed in all the new functionality that has been brought to Access 2003 and 2007.
- We love Oracle 11g! This version has provided some exciting new features, especially for the DBA in the automated memory management and automated storage management front. DML triggers have been optimised too (and you can specify trigger firing order), RMAN is now able to ignore UNDO tablespaces, you will also be able to create virtual columns and virtual indexes, and many more features (it's a major release after all).
- Oracle 11g comes with new DW-features, particularly the integrated OWB with new interface.