The Access integrated set of products was designed and developed employing industry standard Database and 'Open Architecture Development' technologies. These 'state of the art' technologies allow us to support almost all important operating systems and environments in use today, and to support new systems and environments as they become available.
Database
An industry standard relational SQL database is at the heart of all our applications. This fully featured engine and data store provides facilities that include:
- Nearly limitless capacity for holding of data and for the connection of users.
- High performance.
- Self-administering and self-tuning, the database engine requires little or no user maintenance (the taking and monitoring of security backups is the main chore for the user to perform).
- Support for standard data access technologies which enables all leading development and report writing tools to be employed. Thus we as developers have the freedom to choose the most appropriate development tools, and for our users to employ third party report writing products of their choice (if desired).
- Integrity features which safeguard the data:
- multi-update transactions are written to the database as a whole or not at all (particularly important for Accounting Systems).
- in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure, restoration of all data can be achieved to the latest completed transaction (from a recent security backup together with the continuously produced transaction log file which contains the detailed history of all completed transactions performed).
- Offsite / mobile database sub-setting with automatic update synchronisation via the network or the internet. This will enable facilities such as:
- client monitoring of progress on their own matters.
- mobile time recording by fee earners.
Development Tools
Although not normally of interest to the users of our applications it is important to emphasise that the development tools we employ were chosen for having the necessary characteristics to build sophisticated applications for current and future computer environments. These characteristics include:
- Ability to build powerful, robust client-server, web and mobile applications.
- 'Rapid Application Development' (RAD); enabling fast design, development, and implementation.
- Support for major operating systems, and heterogeneous environments (e.g. .NET and Java).
- 'Open' Architecture; enabling dynamic two-way integration with other software providers' products (e.g. Office Automation).
Access Integrated Product Design
The Access products were designed from the outset as an integrated set of applications based upon a single database structure. Integration occurs as transactions are posted and is not reliant, as in some systems, on periodic posting between applications (e.g. purchase ledger to nominal ledgers). Where relevant, and to extend choice of facilities, we provide integration with other software providers' products (e.g. Word Processing, email, diary, etc).