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Development forms the foundation of Poised Solutions,
the ability to create from the ground up any IT Project
allows Poised Solutions to offer a comprehensive; 'from
conception to completion' approach to IT Projects.
Poised Solutions offers development in a wide range of
development fields; web development using web servers and HTTP to produce web applications that can
scale and offer distributed multi user access. Application development both cross platform
GUI development and Daemon development. Ecommerce development is something that the Poised
Solutions team has extensive experience in, producing
some of the earliest and top ecommerce sites on the
world wide web. Database development is offered on a number of
database platforms, both RDBMS development and LDAP development. System development for device drivers and custom
kernels is also available from Poised Solutions, along
with Game Development. If you have a game design and the
finances to back the development, Poised Solutions has the
ability to make that Game Design into a reality.
Development Benefits
Development is the central part to creating a software
solution, without development you just have an idea or
perhaps some requirements. Whilst Poised Solutions does do
integration work with existing applications, Poised
Solutions specialises in Bespoke Development, Development
from a base level that allows for a high level of
customisation and flexibility.
Bespoke development is the creation of software systems
tailored to a solution and to business needs. With bespoke
development fewer compromises have to be made, and the
client is free to get as close to the exact system they
want. Bespoke development can also give a lot of leeway over
the code base and can help avoid the client being locked
into a particular vendor.
Development occurs from some form of specification, Poised
Solutions is happy to work from formal specification to more
free pragmatic development styles. A specification is
always derived though, and often it is best to get that
specification as early as possible in the development life
cycle as alterations late on in the process tend to take
longer to stabilise.
Poised Solutions uses a wide spectrum of programming
languages, this allows for the best languages to be
chosen that fit the business need. Low level programming
in assembly allows for programs where performance is
critical.
System and application level programming in
C and C++ allows for high performance programs with a shorter
development life cycle than assembly development.
Lua is a great scripting language that can be
embedded into programs and used to extend and interface
with the engine logic. Python is a great dynamic language that allows for
rapid application development whilst maintaining a clear
source code base. Perl the great sed and awk killer, is used for
administrative scripts and where development life cycle
has to be kept to a minimum.
Erlang is used for communication systems, and where
scalability, concurrency and distributed is of key concern.
Haskell a pure functional language is used in similar
scenarios to Erlang though has a slightly more mathematical
element to it.
SQL is used to interface with a relational database,
querying, updating and creating new data and data structures.
PHP, ColdFusion and ASP are web centric languages, whilst
all programming languages can produce web applications
these three are dedicated to the web.
BASH and POSIX Shell are primarily used to quickly
create systems for repetitive development and administration
tasks.
Poised Solutions also develops in client side web and
document languages, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML and XSLT.
Development Fields
Development can be separated into a number of development
fields, Poised Solutions has extensive experience of many
development fields, and they are listed below.
Development Fields
- Web Development
-
Web Development covers the creation of applications
that run over HTTP. Web applications allow for a high degree of
scalability, centralised data storage, and single point
security, and combined with a good understanding of client side
web development the web platform is rapidly becoming the
de facto standard in application development. Most modern
business applications should consider using a web platform
to deliver the business logic and service.
- Ecommerce Development
-
Ecommerce Development, is a field that Poised Solutions
specialises in, members of the Poised Solutions teams have
been behind some of the biggest ecommerce success stories
and blue chip ecommerce sites on the web. Poised Solutions
uses bespoke ecommerce systems that allow for fine tuned
business logic and competitive edge.
- Application Development
-
Application Development is offered by Poised Solutions
to create classic GUI applications and Daemon (server)
applications. GUI applications can be created cross
platform and most daemon applications are created for Unix
and Linux style operating systems. Poised Solutions uses
languages from assembly, through C to Python to generate the
perfectly balanced application to solve the business
problem.
- GUI Development
-
GUI Development for cross platform applications using
wxwidgets and terminal based ncurses applications is offered
by Poised Solutions. GUIs are useful for where a business
process has been well defined and data generally needs to be
processed locally, for very specific interfaces GUI is also
applicable.
- Daemon Development
-
Daemon Development refers to services running on
servers, generally these applications are network oriented
and require socket programming, the interface is normally
non graphical, with text logging and an inter process
communication interface. Poised Solutions generally develops
Daemons for Unix and Linux based systems, using the C, C++,
Erlang or Haskell programming languages.
- Database Development
-
Database Development is an important element
of any IT system. Data is the reason that most business
systems exist, the program stores, and manipulates the
data to create information. Data comes in many forms
the two major ways of storing data for multi user access
is LDAP (hierarchical structure) and RDBMS (set based relational structures). Where
performance is critical, data can be stored in basic
structures that allow for high speed access.
- LDAP Development
-
LDAP Development is used by Poised Solutions when the
data structures under consideration are ordered and
hierarchical. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) stores
data in a tree of directory entries, it is most often used
for address data, but as long as the data structure is
hierarchical and ordered it can be used to model a host of
different data models. Poised Solutions tends to use the
OpenLDAP suite of software (slapd and slurpd) to implement
solution.
- RDBMS Development
-
RDBMS Development is revolves around the use of set
logic to model relationships in data. Most databases systems
that people have heard of and use in day to day business are
RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems), and
SQL (Structured Query Language) is the
declarative language most often associated with RDBMS. Poised
Solutions tends to advocate and use the PostgreSQL database, though Oracle and Sybase can also be used.
- System Development
-
System Development refers to Kernel and Driver
development. Every piece of hardware needs to communicate
with a kernel, and this achieved by the writing of driver
software that matches the hardware and kernel interfaces.
With the rise of embedded systems, the call for more driver
software increases especially with regards to the FreeBSD,
OpenBSD and Linux kernel, and in relation to the family
of ARM processors.
- Game Development
-
Game Development and Game Design involves the creation of entertainment or
business simulations. The games industry has a sizable
market share of the computing industry as whole, and often
innovation can be found in the field of Game Development.
Performance is often a key element of Game Development, and
Poised Solutions offers game development using high
performance languages. Games and simulations can also be
used as training tools before introduction to live
systems.
Poised Solutions uses an extensive range of programming
languages, allowing for best fit language environment to
suit the business need of the IT Project.
- Python Developer
-
Python is known as a dynamic language, Python offers
RAD (Rapid Application Development) whilst
enforcing clean code standards. Python has an extensive
library of modules that come included with the standard
Python distribution and many more open source modules
available for more niche work. Python is the language that
Poised Solutions advocates as a general programming language
to solve business challenges. The beauty of Python lies in
the ability to return to the source code after a break and
be able to clearly see what the application does. Python has
been developed for correctness over performance, though
there also exists speed up elements (JITs and VMs) to
improve the running performance of Python.
- Perl Developer
-
Perl is a high level dynamic programming language,
developed in 1987 by Larry Wall whilst he was working as a
system administrator at NASA. Perl is highly optimised to
deal with text, having high performance stdout features, and
a regular expression engine built right into the language.
Perl is a highly expressive language, that contains many
shorthand techniques. Perl is used in many fields; Web
Applications (CGI) powering most of the first generation
websites and still going strong, graphics processing,
database access and text processing.
- C Developer
-
C is a high performance low level programming language,
that allows the programmer to manage memory directly. C has
been used to create a number of operating systems, kernels,
languages and applications. Poised Solutions tends to use C
where performance is critical and it is often used to extend
a higher level language. C is often used to create engines,
and then Lua is embedded to provide the business logic.
- C++ Developer
-
C++ was created by Bjarne Stroustrup and was ISO
standardised in 1991. C++, since its conception in 1979, has
proven a firm favourite with developers looking to build
large scale complex systems. C++ was originally intended as
an enhancement to C (C is really high level assembly
programming), and was initially called 'C with Classes'. A
good grounding in C helps with C++ programming and in many
instances the early adopters of C++ would code very much in
a C style, with access to classes. Poised Solutions offers
C++ development primarily for Unix systems, though other
operating systems can be accommodated.
- Assembly Developer
-
Assembly languages are second generation programming
languages, that have a direct mapping to machine code
instructions passing through a CPU. Assembly programming is
useful in and of itself to gain a full appreciation of how
computer system works, and also where raw performance is
critical, such as in ultra fast trading.
- Lua Developer
-
Lua was created in 1993 by Waldermar, Luiz and
Ierusalimschy in Brazil. Lua is a dynamic scripting
language, that is famed for its small size, and ease of
embedding. Lua was primarily picked up the game development
community as a language to embed and provide some of the
game logic and an interface for the user to configure
elements of the game. Lua has excellent library support, and
has the virtues of extensibility, simplicity, efficiency and
potability. Lua has been designed to be embedded in running
applications in a number of common application environments
such as C and C++.
- HTML Developer
-
HTML is the standard text markup language for the
World Wide Web. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) was invented by
Tim Berners Lee whilst he was working at CERN in Switzerland. HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the protocol that
HTML is sent over. HTML's purpose is to give context to the
text of a document, by enclosing text and objects in tags.
HTML and XHTML is presided over by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C).
- CSS Developer
-
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a language that
describes the presentation of a document written in a markup
language such as HTML. CSS works on the box model, and
defines elements such as border, margin, padding, font,
layout and colours. CSS specifications are maintained by the
W3C. CSS appeared by the end of 1996, and has been gaining
support ever since, the standard way of producing web pages
is to have minimal presentation details in the markup and to
move most of the presentation over to CSS. Poised Solutions
develops websites that take full advantage of the separation
between information and presentation that CSS affords.
- JavaScript Developer
-
JavaScript is a dynamic scripting language normally
embedded in a web browser. JavaScript was invented by
Brendan Eich whilst he was at Netscape. JavaScript went
through a couple of names; Mocha, LiveScript before
acquiring the moniker of JavaScript. JavaScript is a dialect
of ECMAScript, and is under constant development, as the Web
forges on with becoming the dominant development platform.
Poised Solutions has been developing with JavaScript from
the early and can provide JavaScript that takes full
advantage of the DOM and AJAX techniques.
- Erlang Developer
-
Erlang is a semi functional programming language,
developed at Ericsson by Joe Armstrong in 1986, to create
fault tolerant real time communication systems. Erlang is
semi functional, the sequential elements of Erlang are
functional. Erlang is very good for distributed and multi
core systems, using the actor model for concurrency.
- Haskell Developer
-
Haskell is a functional computer programming language
developed by committee. Haskell begun as an impromptu
meeting in 1987 by Peyton Jones as hew was on his way to the
Functional Programming and Computer Architecture Conference,
he dropped in on Hudak and discussed the possibility of a
new common functional programming language, Wadler was also
consulted later. The name Haskell came into being in 1988,
and by 1990 Haskell version 1.0 was released.
- BASH Developer
-
BASH (Bourne Again SHell) is a shell and command
language interpreter that is the standard shell in GNU based
operating systems (most Linux based systems). BASH is sh
(the original Unix shell) compatible and uses many features
found in both the C Shell (csh), and the Korn Shell (Ksh).
BASH aims for POSIX standard and POSIX Shell can be written
in BASH. BASH's main purpose is to allow interaction between
the user, the system and application.
- POSIX Shell Developer
-
POSIX Shell is an IEEE Standard (currently 1003.1).
POSIX Shell defines a shell language for other Shells to
implement. KSH (Korn Shell) is the most conforming shell to
POSIX, but all the major shells tend to adopt POSIX features
and work towards compliance as a subset. Poised Solutions
develops in POSIX Shell style primarily for the portability
advantages that it offers.
- XML Developer
-
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a specification
language used primarily to create custom document markup
languages. XML is maintained by the W3C and XML allows for
interoperable data interchange across disparate systems.
SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language)
is the specification language defining HTML, whereas XML
is the specification langauga that defines XHTML.
- XSLT Developer
-
XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language for
Transformations) is a powerful language designed to
transform XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents into
document of other formats, such as HTML, PDF, and XHTML, it
could even be a transformation of XML into Python code, or C
code. XSLT is used to manage document knowledge bases,
taking raw XML and producing documents that are more readily
readable for humans or computer systems. Poised Solutions
uses XSLT, XQuery and XPath to allow for flexible XML
transformation solutions.
- Java Developer
-
Java is a general purpose programming language. Java
code involves a compile step to create byte code for a
virtual machine which then runs the program. A virtual
machine is not as fast as a compile to native application
but the use of a Just in Time (JIT) compile can improve
speeds. Java is quite strictly and obviously oriented in the
structure of Java programs, though basic data types are
still used. Java is a strictly typed language, which reduces
a certain class of error. Poised Solutions doesn't do too
much Java programming, and tends to convert program from a
Java base to other languages.
- SQL Developer
-
SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard
language for relational database access and manipulation.
SQL is a declarative language developed at IBM by Donald Messerly, Andrew Richardson and
Raymond Boyce in the later part of the 1970s. SQL and RDBMS are now fairly standard for modern
software projects being the preferred way of allowing multi
user access to shared data.
- SQLite Developer
-
SQLite is a database that is embedded directly into an
application, this allows for incredible access speeds, as
there is no latency issues of inter process communication.
SQLite is perfect as a quick drop in database for many
applications. SQLite is often termed the Swiss Army Knife of
SQL databases, and as all the data is represented in SQL
already it is quite simple to upgrade to a full database
such as PostgreSQL if a project requires it. SQLite is a
firm favourite of Poised Solutions when it comes to creating
new databases, and allows for a pragmatic rapid style of
development.
- PostgreSQL Developer
-
PostgreSQL is a firm favourite of Poised Solutions.
PostgreSQL is perhaps the most advanced open source database
on the planet. PostgreSQL adheres closely to SQL standards,
whilst also allowing advanced and powerful techniques to be
incorporated. By virtue of being open source, PostgreSQL can
also be finely tuned to maximise through put. All the
features expected of a modern relational database management
system can be found in PostgreSQL, and PostgreSQL is the
database of choice for many businesses.
- Oracle Developer
-
Oracle is one of the earliest RDBMS and perhaps enjoys
the widest install base of the proprietary databases. Oracle
uses SQL and PLSQL to interface with the data. Poised
Solutions has worked on a number of Oracle databases, and
also converts Oracle databases over to open systems such as
PosgtreSQL.
- Sybase Developer
-
Sybase is a RDBMS (Relation Database Management System)
that primarily uses SQL and Transact-SQL to power it. Sybase
is a proprietary database that has a good record for
performance and stability. Poised Solutions has developed a
number of Sybase solutions and also nowadays converts Sybase
databases over to other solutions such as PostgreSQL.
- PHP Developer
-
PHP (Personal Home Page) was developed in
1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf, and is now maintained by the PHP
Group. PHP is primarily a module written for the Apache web
server that allows for the creation of dynamic server side
web pages. PHP operates through the CGI (Common Gateway
Interface) and has become a popular programming language for
simple intranets and hobbyists on the web. Many websites
start with PHP and evolve into a more formally expressed
language later.
- ASP Developer
-
ASP (Active Server Pages) originally created by
Microsoft to address the CGI side of web development. Much
like mod_php the solution was to embed an environment
directly into the webserver (IIS). ASP allows for different
languages to be used in the ASP encoding, from Visual BASIC
to Python.
- ActionScript Developer
-
ActionScript is the scripting language used in
Shockwave Flash (SWF) files. Flash is primarily a timeline
based environment, but with the addition of action script
actions can occur off the time line. ActionScript also
allows for more programmatic elements to be included in
Flash movies.
- ColdFusion Developer
-
ColdFusion was originally developed by a French called
Allaire, and then subsequently acquired by Macro Media.
ColdFusion uses a taging syntax which is though to make it
simpler for HTML developers to write server side code,
ColdFusion is primarily designed for the web. Poised
Solutions has built a number of ColdFusion sites in the
past, but now tends to converts sites over from ColdFusion
to more flexible solutions.
Development Resources
Development Resources
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