About Esferico: Case Study 2

The Esferico developers were approached to write a replacement application for a British military contractor responsible for maintenance of their central media library, and the order placement and distribution of copies of training materials from that library. The contractor is both a medium sized company working closely with the MOD and is a registered charity.

The system comprises a number of functional areas designed to be used by several departments within the organisation. The librarian staff use the system to create and maintain archival copies within a substantial media library with a wide range of high-end media, while the stock control department use the system to order often large copy runs to both VHS and DVD from specialist copying centres.

By far the greatest use of the system however, is made by the order fulfilment and warehouse departments receiving order from military units around the world for training materials, as well as under instruction from central government for 'bulk issue' of materials. Under some situations, the system may deal with the addition of tens of thousands of records in any single order.

With the printing of despatch notes, the warehouse department then also use the system to despatch these orders around the world. We are pleased to say that two incarnations later to deal with a changing world, the client is still with us after more than a decade. They are currently working with us to develop a replacement system as a third incarnation, using REAL Software's development tools and a large RDBMS database.

Skills and products utilised:
Analysis, design and development; MS Visual Development tools; MS Access; Intranet based search facilities; REALSoftware development tools; MySQL; Manual production; training; implementation consultancy; onsite, telephone and online support management.