Technologies

Microsoft .Net

Most of Real World IS projects in the past few years have utilized the Microsoft .Net environment.  Visual Studio 2005 and 2003 are in production today.  ASP.net for Web-based application and "WinForms" for Windows-based applications.

VB6/COM/DCOM

Although there is typically not any new development in these Microsoft technologies (the predecessor to .Net), Real World IS has a number of application that are in production and provides support for these technologies.  Whether to upgrade to the latest tools is a case-by-case decision.

Database platforms

Real World IS commonly recommends the Microsoft SQL Server family of products.  For modest sized needs, there is a 'free' SQL Express product that includes many of SQL Server's features.  These solutions can grow into the full versions of SQL if the applications catches on and needs more performance and management options.

Real World IS specializes in heterogenous data sources (i.e. uncommon and sometimes unstructured formats).  Past products have included full-fledged databases such as Oracle, mySQL, Postgres; consumer and/or legacy databases such as FoxPro, dBase, Microsoft Access; and even less common and traditional data sources such as text files, XML, data in HTML web pages.

Linux-Apache-mySQL-PHP (LAMP)

Real World IS has some light experience in the LAMP platform.  There are many open source/free packages that are popular on this platform, so we have selected those for needs such as a content management system, help desk application, etc.