Data Systems Development Today data is everywhere; in every office, on every computer and stored in millions upon millions of records in millions of databases. As our databases grow and our businesses evolve this data becomes harder to track, searches take longer and often the interfaces fail to provide the sort of information our business now demands. VerroTech believe in developing Portal-based Data Systems. This system consists basically of splitting the database (or dataset) from the interface system. This system is explained in more detail below. All of the examples quoted within this document are working live systems and available for demonstration upon request.

An example would be VerroTech's web logs. These are stored in a massive database in a 'raw' format containing requests, IP address and so on. At least two groups would like access to this information, the customers who's websites are hosted and the VerroTech staff to check for abuse and/or bandwidth constraint compliance.

The system chosen is to build a Data Portal that pulls information from the central database and re-formats it, seperating spurious data and analysing certain fields. This prepared data is then used by a nunber of Data Portal Applications such as the VerroTech Control Panel for users and the staff interface, each user seeing exactly which data is relevant to them with the ability to perform faster customised searches upon the data.

Data Mining

Although for most purposes the combination of a main back-end database, a mid-level formatting and query level combined with a custom Data-Portal will be sufficient for all 'data views' required, we sometimes wish to perform more detailed trend-based analysis for a powerful 'overall' view.

The technique that VerroTech employ to furfil such requirements is known as Data Mining.

Data Mining is a more complicated system that involves a careful consideration of exectly what sort of information we would like to see from our database. Once the decision on the exect information requirements of the system are decided, a custom Data Mining engine would be created. The mining engine would be run periodically upon the main database and, taking each record of interest to it's analysis, would be copied into a centralised Data Warehouse system in a form suitable for our analysis requirements. Once the copy-up of the data had occured, very powerful regressive search and pattern analysis software is run using the data contained in the warehouse.

This mid-level querying and sorting of the warehouse is in some ways similar to the mid-level employed on traditional database systems with one key difference; it is working on a dataset created exclusively for use by the analysis software and not having the overheads involved in analysing a common-use database (one configured for common use by the input, management and analysis tools). Not only does this allow much faster queries but also more powerful analysis to be performed as the data can be pre-ordered or formatted to requirements.

Once the data-mining run is completed, the results would be loaded into a static form or dynamic results copied into a third data-set. These results would be accessed via a Data-Portal specifically written to use them.

Fully Customised Solutions Although VerroTech believe strongly in using 'boxed' products for the structural build of the data system (for example, we prefer using an industry standard backend database such as MySQL rather than incurring the overhead of a custom database engine) we also believe that your interface and analysis needs will vary vastly and usually require a custom solution. We use a detailed and iterative project method involving detailed analysis and planning of all systems before implementation. In addition to providing a range of agreed milestones for development with the customer (with options at various stages to not continue without adverse financial penalty) we will always provide some form of satisfaction or assurance guarentee. We develop a full range of our data applications in C++ (Windows, Unix and CGI) preferring to utilise the speed and development advantage of PHP where totally web-based systems are required. All our systems will come with full user and development documentation. Ownership of the system remains with you, and this provides total flexibility for later additions and modifications to the system. We also can provide an ongoing maintainence agreement as part of the total system package. Interested in deploying a stable, reliable, robust and above all useable system? Why not contact us for a no-obligation requirements investigation and initial quote.

Example VerroTech Systems VCP: VerroTech Control Panel The VCP is a powerful data-portal using an interface to our core weblogging system in addition to several specific data sources (such as webmail configurations). This allows our customers easy access to their web statistics in addition to several other powerful tools. LMS: Log Management System The VerroTech Log Management System is a custom system deployed by VerroTech to aid in our systems assurance program. This system comprises of a multi-level backend data system which is accessed by a data-portal in addition to being used in Data Mining excersises to identify potential faults and attacks. VIS: VerroTech Information System The VerroTech Information System is our core data system and contains customer information in addition to sales, invoice and payment data. This is accessed via a range of data-portals specific to the users (sales, support, customer services etc...) in addition to some automated batch work to highlight due payments etc... VLS: VerroTech Live Support Our Online Live Support System consists of a multi-level backend data system accessable via a number of data-portals. This allows customers to make and monitor support requests and our staff to work on the request, post information or request information from the customers via an interactive system.