Database Systems

About 40% of our projects are database applications. These applications range from small, single-user applications using Access to large, multi-user systems that are built around a SQL server.

Dirican uses tools that offer a high level of functionality at a reasonable cost. In addition, our development tools are actively supported by the vendors who create them, are strategically important to our clients, and will be integral in the Internet landscape of the future. For this reason, our principal asset is the clear knowledge of the tools and systems developed by Microsoft, MenIB, Ocular, and other major vendors.

For Internet systems, we build our Web servers around Windows NT, Microsoft's Internet Information Server, and Apache Web Server. For larger applications, we use SQL Server or Ocular for the database engine. For smaller applications, we use the Jet database (Access) format.

For systems that do not require an Internet interface, our database applications are based on the Microsoft Office suite, generally Excel or Access, enhanced with Visual Basic. For larger systems, we will use Visual Basic for the client front end and SQL Server as the data management back end.

Many of our applications involve combining functionality from different products in the Office suite. For example, in one application we dynamically create an Excel graph from code in an Access database - not just by exporting data, but by creating different types of graphs, formatting area for table output, changing fonts and colors.

Web Development

Our forte is developing complex, data-oriented web systems.

We use Active Server Pages and VB Script for server side automation, and JavaScript and Java for client-side automation.

Our web pages can be highly polymorphic, with the appearance of a page differing depending on a particular user's rights, level in a hierarchy, or with the data that is to be displayed on the page.

Examples Include:

• We built a sales tracking system for an international logistics company. Salespeople use the system to enter their new business - new products to existing clients, or bringing new clients to the company - and to see activity from their existing clients. Sales management uses the system to project new business and to track the productivity of their salespeople. Marketing uses the system to see overall trends in the company's key clients, products, and locations.
• We used precomputed tables and indices to speed performance in another system. This technique allowed us to deliver extremely fast response in challenging tasks like "drilling down" from a overall company view, through regions, zones, salesperson, client, product, location - down to the individual shipment.

Office Automation

Microsoft Office is a powerful platform. By using the built-in programming language Visual Basic for Applications, Dirican has automated Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint to produce highly functional yet easy to use applications. Some of the applications we have built include: Automatic generation and processing of email messages with Outlook

• Complete data management applications build inside Excel
• Automatic generation of PowerPoint presentations based on a user's selections
• Integrated Word documents in Web and database applications