Tools & Technologies
Our main area of activity lies within the Microsoft software environment: specifically Windows and Web applications built using Microsoft development tools and technologies.
.Net
- C# is our preferred development language, but vb.net is also used when required. For a developer C# is the ideal language for modern Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), since like the .Net framework it has OO designed-in from the start.Visual Studio
remains the premier development tool for the .net platform - for both Windows Forms applications, and Web Applications, together with Visual SourceSafe for version control. The good support for ADO.Net functionality makes for highly productive development of efficient, scalable data-driven applications. An even bigger bonus is that developing Web applications with ASP.Net has become a pleasurable experience (but roll-on ASP 2.0).-
SQL Server
- our involvement with SQL Server starts right from the very first release (1.0) based on OS/2, which originally derived from the same Sybase product codebase. The key feature that Sybase and later Microsoft supported that made SQL Server such a radical product at the time was it's support for stored procedures and triggers, written in the Transact-SQL language. Although there have been many small enhancements over the years, the core product (for the developer) remains much as it was introduced in 1989. The recent addition of Reporting Services has added a valuable new tool to the product set. Visual Basic
- we have been developing with VB since version 1.0 was released circa 1991. Once again, Microsoft introduced a product that broke all previous standards in it's support for the Windows desktop environment. Of course, VB 6.0 is a long leap from VB 1.0, but again most of the core language features have been retained over many years, whilst adding necessary support for COM objects, and limited but adequate Object-Orientation. VB.net extends the VB syntax into the purely OO world of .Net - a vital stepping-stone for migrating existing applications.XML
- at last, a standard for describing data in a platform-independent manner, and an essential key to current practice in application integration, data exchange, and inter-system messaging. With the next version of SQL Server supporting an intrinsic Xml data type and XQuery, we will have the ideal solution for complex hierarchical data schemas, and dynamic content management .CSS
- web development has long been a rather messy and unstructured affair, but with the introduction of CSS we have at least got a means of separating presentation and layout styling from content. As with all things internet, it's not quite as simple and seamless as it seems, and browser support is not yet entirely predictable, but nevertheless it's an extremely important move in the right direction.