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Microsoft Access Database Migration

Are you hitting the limits of Microsoft Access? Do you want to allow your customers access to the data? Do you need to allow employees to work remotely?

Microsoft Access Migration to a Web based application


Microsoft Access is commonly used by a large number of companies, for what often start out to be relatively simple applications - for example :

  • Address books,
  • Order tracking,
  • Inventory lists,
  • Invoicing,
  • Customer relationship management,
  • Stock lists
  • and much more.

Unfortunately, as many people have already discovered, Microsoft Access does not scale well and problems will often be experienced once more than a handful of people are accessing the database.

Microsoft Access is a thick client application, which requires Microsoft Office to be installed on the local computer. Because of this it is often difficult to access the database remotely.

Why ?


Pale Purple have undertaken a number of migrations from Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL Server based applications to web based applications. We base our solutions around Open Source software which gives you (the customer) a number of benefits :

  • No vendor lock-in (i.e. you are free to use another supplier in the future).
  • The source code to the application is yours to keep - we don't charge any license fees.
  • We use a number of libraries and frameworks produced by other Open Source developers; this results in faster development and lower costs, while improving quality and reliability.
  • We develop to globally agreed standards (W3C), which ensure your application is future-proof and should run anywhere.

Benefits?

  • Increased scalability - more people will be able to use the application, with no direct link between scalability and cost.
  • Increased performance - using Industry standard database engines (MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle) application responsiveness will increase.
  • Limited (or complete) customer access - a granular security model allows you to specify what different user types can and can't do.
  • Inbuilt audit trail - giving you full traceability and peace of mind.
  • Accessible remotely - using any of the main web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari).
  • No license fees - based on Open Source technology, meaning there is no vendor lock-in or licensing fees.
  • Standards compliant - developed inline with globally recognised standards, your application will work on all major web browsers and platforms for the foreseeable future.
  • Extensible - you can extend the functionality of the application over time - as your budget permits, or your business changes. Our web based applications are written in PHP, which is currently the 4th most popular language (behind C, Java and .Net) which means it should be easy to find support or undertake development.

Examples


Example 1:


A large, Midlands based, charitable organisation approached Pale Purple with a request to migrate from a Microsoft SQL Server based application to one based on open source technology. This project involved migrating data from Microsoft SQL Server to the open source PostgreSQL, and then constructing a web based interface to the database.

The data migration included a data re-forming stage, where referential integrity rules and constraints were introduced along with some normalisation to ensure data integrity and relationships were correct and well formed.

The application provides exports to CSV and Microsoft Office formats, allowing other business processes to continue as before without interruption.

Example 2:


A battery distribution and maintenance company approached Pale Purple with a request to migrate from Microsoft Access to a web based application. They were suffering from poor scalability, performance and reliability.

The Access database formed a crucial part to their business, and was used for a number of business processes (on site engineer visits, invoicing, quoting, customer relationship management) and so on.

This project involved migrating from Access to MySQL, and implementation of a number of business processes, along with some new functionality. In order to improve the end user experience we used some AJAX and Javascript to make the application more interactive (with fewer page loads and selection pages).

The application provides exports to PDF for invoicing and quoting.