PRESS RELEASE – SEPTEMBER 2011

Administer Software Limited is making the biggest decision since its inception in 2004. We are changing development tools – and, in more ways than one!

Administer Software Limited has always used Clarion as its primary development tool together with its proprietary database engine. Managing Director Colin Wynn has been using Clarion since the good old MSDOS days of 1990, however, that is all about to change. From September 2011 all new development will be done in Microsoft’s Visual Studio, using C# to develop Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications within a .Net Framework, and using Microsoft Structured Query Language (MSSQL) as the database engine.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
WPF is a graphical display system for Windows and is the most radical change to hit Windows user interfaces since Windows 95. Windows developers have been using the same display technology for more than 15 years, however, WPF is the platform for the future of Windows user interface development as it offers the best prospects for future enhancements and longevity.

Microsoft Structured Query Language (MSSQL)
Changing the database engine to MSSQL will provide increased stability, security, portability and more importantly speed. MSSQL is known as one of the fastest database engines around, as data requests are sent to the MSSQL server where the request is only processed on the Server, therefore returning only the full set of results (at present a request is sent to the Server for data and a piece of data is returned and processed by the workstation before returning to the Server for more data, until completion of the request).

So, for many months we will mainly have our heads in books, and participating in online training schedules, while we try to master several new technologies, sometimes all at once! While we know this will be a long and daunting task we are very excited about the future.

We will shortly begin several rounds of questionnaires for our users to participate in to gauge what enhancements they could benefit from.