A joint project with Slant Design

Alvechurch Data have just completed a web database project for Community First in Malvern. The object was to combine four incompatible databases, one for each county in the West Midlands, into a single system that would allow users to search for details of community resources across the region. Community First co-ordinated this project and chose Alvechurch Data, who had been working on their internal databases for many years, for the data-processing component of the work.

The contract for the web site itself was awarded to Slant Design of Malvern who had already been successful in developing the intranet and extranet sites at Community First.

Coordinated efforts

Such joint projects can be difficult but a simple and well-defined design meant that we avoided many of the technical problems. We decided to use XML as the common data format between the four databases and the web site. Alvechurch Data wrote software to convert each site's database into a common XML format and automated the FTP transfer of these files to the web. Slant Design then took these XML files, pulled them into a central database, and wrote the pages that allow users to search for facilities that met their requirements.

Thanks to this careful preparation and to close co-operation between the our companies the project was delivered on time and to budget. Users do not realise that their application was developed in two different languages by two different companies. We took special care during development to keep the style of the individual Visual Basic programs compatible with the web pages.

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