Existing Solutions

We’ve seen all sorts of solutions from ancient monsters to simple ‘home built’ databases and there’s nothing our team is afraid of, and so much we can do. We’ve even disarmed a system that was riddled with time bombs put in by a disgruntled ex-employee. We can help with:

• Extending and adding on
• Updating to the current version of FileMaker
• A make-over
• Finishing unfinished projects

Options

There’s a raft of different approaches that can be taken from just keeping things running to giving a system a good overhaul, adding on or just fixing the essentials. Sometimes though a system can become unwieldy and impractical to work on and it it’s better to start over.

A good way to start is with a “Health Check” to see just what sort of shape the system is in, and at the same time get some basic documentation in place so that we (or anyone else working on the system) can find their way around under the hood.

Safety First

We can also advise on security, backups and recovery plans specific to FileMaker solutions—it’s not tremendously complex, but the FileMaker platform is designed to be secured and backed up in particular ways. Drop us a line if you’d like us to look specifically at this for you.

Start Over or Keep Going?

Maintaining an existing system isn’t always the best approach or sometimes is just a temporary solution. If you’ve got a legacy solution, or maybe a fairly new system that doesn’t work right, how do you know if you should ‘bin it’ and start over, or persist with keeping what you’ve got going?

An Industry Secret

As developers we have a tendency to want to start again but that doesn’t necessarily make business sense... it’s human nature to want to start afresh, in part because it’s big challenge to understand someone else’s thinking and it’s always nice to start with something shiny and new, done our own way.

But realistically this is a business system so it needs to be a rational decision. If the database structure is poor or if there’s just so much legacy code and crud that it’s too fragile to work with then maintaining the system might cost more in terms of our time and your sanity (and business integrity) than it’s worth...