Visual Basic

Developing an application in Microsoft Visual Basic can result in a fast-performing application that is tailored to the specific look and feel you're after. Visual Basic's flexibility lends itself to development of applications ranging from large multi-user systems and distributed applications down to single-user applications and small utility programs.

Access

Developing an application in Microsoft Access has a number of advantages. It is generally less expensive to develop an application in Access as compared to Visual Basic, because the development time is usually much shorter. An Access application can be modified much more quickly as well. If you later outgrow your Access database, the data can be converted to a SQL Server database without much trouble.

Access Database Recovery

Accounting Software

Do you have existing accounting software that is just not flexible enough to produce the type of reports that you would like see? We may be able to design a custom application for you that reports off of your existing data.

Have you evaluated a number of "off the shelf" accounting software applications, but have yet to find one that seems to be a good "fit" for the way you do business? We can design a software application with the features you are looking for.

Are you happy with the general functionality of your existing accounting software when it comes to Accounts Payable, General Ledger, etc., but need a better way to enter sales orders or invoices? It may be possible to create a separate application for sales orders or invoices that integrates with your existing accounting software. What if integration, import/export, etc. is just not possible with your existing accounting software, but you would still prefer a separate application for sales entry? We could create a solution whereby the new application produces a report of General Ledger summary or detail transactions for later manual posting to General Ledger (provided, of course, that the resulting number of General Ledger posting transactions makes this a practical option for you).

SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is a much more powerful database than Microsoft Access. While Access may be fine for offices with a small number of users, as the number of users or the amount of data in your company continues to grow, the performance of your Access-based application may eventually no longer be able to keep up with that growth. Migrating your data to SQL Server may be the solution for you.

Unlike Access, SQL Server is a true "client/server" database. What this means is that the majority of the work in processing data is actually done on the server, rather than on the user's workstation. For example, if a user runs a query that searches through thousands of rows of data to find the few rows that belong to customer "ABC Company", desktop databases such as Microsoft Access must retrieve those thousands of rows from the shared database on your file server and bring them over your network down to the user's workstation. The user's workstation then does the work of querying those rows to locate the few desired rows. But with a client/server database, such as SQL Server, the querying takes place on the server machine, not the user's workstation. Only the few desired rows (the few belonging to customer "ABC Company", for example) are retrieved over the network and brought down to the user's workstation. Network traffic is thereby minimized, resulting in better performance. In addition, performance can be greatly enhanced by adding more "horsepower" to the server machine in the way of disk space, memory, processor speed, number of processors, etc., since this is the machine where the majority of processing now occurs.

If you already have a SQL Server database, there's a lot that a consultant can do to increase the performance of your database for your particular needs. By taking a look at the type of queries commonly being run in your company, a consultant can often "tune" the database to be more responsive to these queries. This can be done by adding additional indexes that can speed the execution of the queries commonly being run. Or, it may be that making more use of stored procedures or improving the efficiency of existing stored procedures could boost your performance.

Reporting Database / Datamart / Data Warehouse

Your database may be running efficiently enough, but can your users locate the data they need to furnish management with good decision support? When users try to run reports on your data, do the reports take a long time to run? A database that is well-designed for data entry purposes (OLTP - Online Transaction Processing) may not be well suited for reporting purposes (OLAP - Online Analytical Processing). You may benefit by having a reporting database (a Datamart or Data Warehouse) designed for your specific reporting requirements. Such a database can be automatically refreshed weekly, nightly, hourly, etc., according to the particular need.

(Microsoft SQL Server comes with DTS - Data Transformation Services, a tool that facilitates the gathering of data from various sources into a common database for reporting purposes. DTS can handle any needed conversion or "transformation" of the data. SQL Server also manages the scheduling of DTS packages to automatically refresh data at regular predetermined intervals.)

Using Visual Basic in a 3-tier design

Visual Basic can be used to create presentation layer, business layer, and data layer components in a 3-tier design. The business and data middle tier components sit "between" the client programs and the database server. Requests for data from the client programs are passed to the middle tier components which retrieve the data and pass the results back to the client programs.

One advantage of this approach is that database resources are conserved. It is as though the database server "sees" fewer users out there than there really are, since the middle tier "pools" connections to the database. Another advantage of this type of design is scalability. As the number of users on your system grows, performance can be improved by distributing this load across additional "middle tier" machines (without the need for programming changes), thereby reducing the need for additional database servers.

Using Visual Basic custom programming to connect your computer with special purpose devices

Custom programming can be done with Visual Basic to interface various devices through your PC's serial communications port. These could be devices such as bar code readers, digitizers, optical mark readers, time clocks, or any other special purpose device capable of communication through an RS232 port.

If you are in need of creating an application capable of communicating with such devices, Visual Basic can be used either to create the complete application, or VB might be used only to create the portion that handles the communication. Because of Visual Basic's ability to create ActiveX .DLLs, the complexities of communicating with a device can be "wrapped" in a COM object that then exposes properties and methods for communicating with the device in a simpler way. You can then use the COM object with any other programming language that supports the COM interface.

Extend the power of Crystal Reports with Visual Basic

Visual Basic can be used to extend the power of Crystal Reports through the use of user-defined functions. Using VB, programming can be done to create additional functions in a .DLL that Crystal Reports will recognize. These custom functions then appear right along with the list of built-in functions when designing formulas in the Crystal Reports Designer.

One example of where this can be of benefit might be in creating functions to manipulate a special fiscal calendar that your company uses. Creation of functions such as these might mean that "power-user" employees familiar with Crystal Reports will be able to produce many more reports on their own with the aid of such functions, instead of having to pass those reports on to programming staff or outside consultants due to the complexity of calculations, etc.

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