services

web development

We build web applications using the best of breed frameworks available on Python and PHP:

For Python, this will be one of:

• Django - the leading Python full stack framework
• Masonite - a Laravel clone for Python (we really love this one)
• FastAPI - the fastest we've tried so far

For PHP, this will be one of:

• Laravel - simply the best PHP framework out there
• Lumen - a stripped down version of Laravel for API-only based sites.

Examples of projects that we have worked on recently:

• A risk and threat analysis system for a global online retailer written in Django with the Django Rest Framework, multiple MySQL and PostgreSQL database backends, remote API calls, process queues, exports in Excel format, etc.
• An application to allow organistions to handle their membership, volunteers, events etc - written in Laravel with MySQL database backend
• A multi-player online strategy game - more details as we near a beta release.

Note: being primarily a "backend" development company, we don't do the front end designs ourselves, but bring in UX and JS/CSS experts as needed.

backend transaction processing

Not everything happens in a Web browser! Nor indeed within a Web applications typical request/response lifecycle. Much of the work we do revolves around the kind of processing that has been around for decades: fetching data, manipulating it, and storing it at the other end. It's not particularly glamarous, but it is usually business critical. We've been doing this for decades, and we like to think that we're really rather good at it.

An example of a project we worked on recently:

• A trade monitoring tool run by a global Professional Services firm on behalf of multiple Investment Management clients - the backend processing involved fetching denormlised data from numerous sources daily (mainly from AWS S3 and some remote FTP and SFTP servers) using a set of interdependent Python scripts, processing these using various data processing tools (eg Pandas), and storing the results in relational format in an SQL Server AWS instance.

database design

We can design your database schema for you, ether as part if a larger system build, or as a standalone exercide for you to take forward with your own teams.

We have designed and built relational databases in:

• Microsoft SQL Server
• MySQL and MariadDB
• PostgreSQL
• SQLBase
• SQLite
• Oracle
• Microsoft Access
• and various others

As well as schemaless builds with:

• Redis
• DynamoDB
• MemcacheDB
• and various others

data migrations

Migrating data from one system to another can be difficult. We know, we do it regularly. We can help you to get it done properly. Whether you are migrating from one database platform to another (eg From SQL Server to PostgreSQL) or from one schema to another (eg if changing your CMS platform), we've been there, done it, come out the far end with smiles all round!

Examples of data migrations that we have done include:

• Migrating magazine content (including assets, article revisions etc) from SQL Server to MySQL (custom SQL and PHP scripts)
• Migrating financial articles from SQL Server to a Drupal system (Custom Access app to connect to SQL server, generating custom XML for batch processing by the Drupal importer module)

Microsoft Office Development

So you need to build (or update) a departamental system built in Excel, Access, Word etc. Or it's time to upgrade your system to something more strategic (whilst keeping the ever important exports to Excel and Word). Drop us a line - we've done this lots of times too.

We have in depth knowledge and experience of building Office based apps using VBA macros and of upscaling Access databases to use SQL Server as the data store (or another database via ODBC).