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Database Systems

Mintra Systems specialises in the creation of business database systems for a wide range of custom applications in small organisations. These can be brand new systems, replacements for aging computerised or paper based systems, or extensions to existing database systems currently in use.

In the past, databases produced for customers have included order and delivery tracking, business statistics and library automation, amongst others.

We work with two main database management systems; MySQL and Microsoft Access. Which we use will depend on the scale and nature of the task, or the customer's request.

To create small office databases to be used by a couple of people, Access will probably be used, especially since this is often already installed on customers' PCs as part of Microsoft Office. Access allows for the rapid creation of both the front-end user interface and the underlying database structure.

However, for larger, multi-user databases, possibly with a web front end, we generally use MySQL. MySQL is a free DBMS which is available for most operating systems but does not offer the rapid application development and user interface features that Access does. Instead it concentrates on performing better as a database back-end than Access. We write the front-end for MySQL in PHP and HTML, to be delivered through a web browser.