Consultancy

Applications
In parallel with the range of systems software services described on other pages in this site, MPC Data also provides a complete bespoke applications development service.

Starting with either a broad statement of the business problem or a detailed Requirements Analysis, a primary objective in our applications development strategy is to systematically build up a comprehensive and clear picture of the target solution. In order to achieve this we employ a variety of simple but proven techniques such as "use case" scenario, focused interviews, screen demonstrations and sample reports.

If desired, this leads to a detailed Functional Specification together with a Fixed Price Quotation for completing the development to the level where the application is ready for Beta Test trials. Alternatively the project can be subdivided into phases each of which is treated as a mini-project with self-contained functional deliverables and/or RAD prototypes.

We can also advise on, and (if requested) implement, any procedure needed to cut over from an old system to the new software. This would deal with such issues as parallel running and database conversion.

If the application depends on some special piece of equipment then we can also take responsibility for all the firmware/device drivers/protocols etc which are needed to support the equipment, and we can ensure its trouble-free interface with the application-level software; in other words we can provide a "one stop" solution for systems integrators. A sizeable proportion of our application projects fall into this category, the remainder being just pure application software.

We have in-depth expertise relating to Applications Development as follows:

Man-Machine Interface design
Internationalisation
Functional Specification preparation
O-O design (including UML and use cases)
Database design
Object access technology: CORBA, COM, DCE
RDBMs: Informix, Oracle, SQL Server, Access, MySQL
Programming languages: C, C++, C#, Java (including Swing),
(also VB, Perl, Python, Javascript etc)
Windows: 9X, NT, ME, XP, MFC, .NET
Unix: Solaris, Linux
Macintosh: Mac OS X
Web: Servlets, CGi, PHP, XML
Application test harnesses