COMMONWEALTH SOFTWARE
specializes in original programming for
Windows-based personal computers, delivering full solutions on schedule,
with a professional level of quality, at reasonable cost, and with
friendly, capable and highly available support.
Our approach originates with existing processes – paper forms, data
tables, spreadsheets, older applications, or a large enterprise
application that lacks a needed feature, and fills the gaps between
systems you already have and the functionality you need.
Often the application can begin operating in a short time as a working
prototype that both accomplishes the most urgently-needed tasks and also
provides a platform on which further development can be evaluated and
built. As work continues, components can be added in the order in which
the need for them is most strongly felt.
This incremental, phased, iterative approach allows the system to be
successful and to provide return on investment from an early stage, and
improves the accuracy of cost estimates at every stage.
Much of the power of an iterative method depends on the developer’s
ability to carry out the challenging task of periodically “refactoring”
the system as it grows – reorganizing it to keep it clean and modular. COMMONWEALTH
SOFTWARE has an extended history of refactoring and of
migrating a system’s data seamlessly from one phase to the next.
1. Programming
— Custom Windows programs written in Microsoft Visual BASIC,
typically using a relational database for data storage and networked
for multi-user operation. This is our core competency, and our programs
have been assisting people in their daily work for a decade and a
half. We can build an evolving system which develops at a pace that
suits both the organization’s needs and the evolving skills of its
operators.
2. Documentation — A Commonwealth
Software application is generally supplied with well-commented source
code and an easy-to-read, fully-illustrated user manual, complete with
detailed technical appendices.
3. Databases — Relational databases and
database applications and analysis tools can be designed using Visual BASIC,
Lotus Approach or Microsoft Access and/or your server-based DBMS,
modeling a few or many of your organization’s activities.
4. Data analysis — Using Lotus Approach,
COGNOS, Oracle Reports, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Access,
Excel, reporting processes and applications can provide vital metrics for
your organization’s activities based on live connectivity with your data.
5. Migration — Older custom programs and
analytical tools can be adapted or migrated to operate on a newer platform.
6. Rescue — Custom programs that need updating
or never worked right can be examined and made to work, readying them for
further development. Older, dysfunctional programs often contain valuable ideas
that incorporate the effort put into their development. Poorly-documented
systems can be re-documented.
