Providing web and database services to the Austin metropolitan area.

Database Austin Case Study –Local Austin Laboratory (page 4)

More Design Decisions

Long-Term Maintainability

Our customer did not want to ever again be in a position where they were held hostage by their software. They needed a system where the source code was freely available, using a stable mainstream technology that would be around for a long time. In addition, the code should be written in a manner that could be picked up and modified by other technically proficient programmers at a later date. We were happy to oblige - Database Austin succeeds by providing quality software solutions to our customers, not by extorting them through closed systems.

Intranet vs Internet

Once the decision was made to go to a browser-based application, the next decision was whether to make the application local (Intranet, or LAN) versus Internet. Since this laboratory operates out of a single office, a LAN-based application was the most appropriate.

Database Selection

The original Visual dBase information was initially ported to Microsoft Access databases. As the system grew, the limitations, performance, reliability, and instabilities for Microsoft Access became serious issues. A fully-featured, SQL-compliant, enterprise level database management system was required. Microsoft SQL Server was considered, but soon discarded because of the expense, OS requirements (requires Windows 2000/2003 Server), and concerns of reliability. Instead, the “world’s most popular open source database”, mySQL was selected. The performance, reliability, and ease of integration with the php programming language have been extraordinary.

Software Language

There are a variety of software languages available for web development. Database Austin has developed in ASP/X, perl, php, and cgi-bin scripts for web development. The clear choice is php. It is a rich, stable, well-supported open-source programming language with a huge user community.

Class Libraries

The php programming language supports object-oriented features. Database Austin took advantage of these features by developing a variety of classes to facilitate various aspects of the Wildcat database.