ComponentOne VSFlexGrid™ Pro Delivers Critical Functionality to Useful Engineering

Useful Engineering needed to develop an application for a manufacturing company that would eliminate stacks of paper, inconsistent data and hard to use Excel spreadsheets, as well as reduce the time it takes to find and navigate through critical information. They created this application by utilizing ComponentOne VSFlexGrid™ Pro to pull together related pieces of data (engineering and financial), and the items associated with each including parts coupled with price quotes, parts coupled with sales orders, and part specifications. As a result of this application, what used to typically take over an hour to find is now found in less than several minutes.

Prior to the implementation of this new application the company used standard Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel. Users not trained in information technology were forced to perform a database administration role, consequently resulting in errors, inefficiency, and frustration.

Useful Engineering needed a way to tie together various types of data that were previously stored in spreadsheets, without any real relation between them or ways to analyze or find important information. As a result they selected VSFlexGrid Pro because it provided the features and functionality the developers needed, plus it was recommended. VSFlexGrid Pro enabled Useful Engineering to easily write a user-friendly application intelligently providing an interface to an underlying datastore. They selected this product because the Visual Basic 6 built-in grid controls were not displaying the information the way they needed. Those controls came with an apparent API, but did not perform consistently or intuitively when formatting display data.

“We purchased VSFlexGrid Pro because it included an API, which enabled quick development, automatic printing, and lots of options for formatting and displaying. It was also easy to use and helped to satisfy the requirements of the client, all for a very affordable price,” said Brian Katz of Useful Engineering.

This solution took 120 -140 hours of development time to create and works by interfacing to a Microsoft Access database, but is designed to work with any common database via a change to an XML configuration file. Tabs are used for navigating between the various components including parts, sales, and customers. Each tab contains navigation controls and one or more VSFlexGrid Pro controls displaying information focused on the current subject of the tab. Case in point, the "Parts" tab enables the user to navigate thru parts, and for each part VSFlexGrid Pro is able to display the associated sales and quotes. On the "Sales" tab, the user can navigate thru all the sales orders, and VSFlexGrid Pro will display the items for that order. In addition, each item displayed in the grid can be highlighted and navigate to another area of the application. Also, there is a special tab for advanced reporting and searching, and there are data entry facilities, which the grids are integrated with.

The architecture is a basic client-server application built to anticipate a possible upgrade of databases. The clients use a local executable, and each seat queries a database located on a central server. Any client can use the Web for different kinds of reporting by means of the same server and same database.

The application was designed and executed by:

• Interviewing the client and prospective end users, and learning about their business processes
• Creating a non-working prototype with screenshots and limited workflow
• Discussing the prototype and finalizing the design and functionality
• Delivering an alpha version
• Getting feedback from the alpha version and using this for a final beta version
• Finalizing the beta version based on feedback and delivering the final application

This successful application currently houses 15,000 records, and comprises several important factors that made it a success including the simplified user interface, consistent and easy to find data, high-quality report designs, easy report generation, and superior response times and performance, as well as a reduction in work hours.

About Useful Engineering

Useful Engineering provides custom software and web solutions for small to midsize businesses and nonprofits including work in database and application development, Web site creation and maintenance, and intranet development and support. They aim to produce applications, which make business processes easier and more efficient. For more information, please visit www.usefulengineering.com