Delivery

The Ixxus development team have the technical skills to tackle all parts of the web-based technology stack, from the user-interface, to mid-tiered application servers, databases, search engine and other services.

Our team remain technology 'agnostic', and so implement using J2EE and open source technologies as well as Microsoft .NET technologies such as C# and ASP.NET.

Many solutions require exploitation of structured and unstructured data, so our system implementations use traditional RDBMS databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL, advanced search solutions such as FAST ESP, Autonomy, Verity and Lucene, and content management systems such as Alfresco, Percussion and Documentum.

We also have experience building geo-spatial storage and search solutions allowing scalable searches across 'geo-tagged' records, and alternative architectures utilising the new breed of XML based content servers.

The development methodology chosen is based upon the appropriateness to the project and the client. This can vary from traditional 'waterfall' approaches (detailed definition phase, a build phase, test-phase, and then deliver), to more agile strategies involving frequent releases, continual integration, ongoing client involvement, iterative functional deliveries, and regular requirements reviews.

Some key aspects to ensuring an ongoing emphasis on quality are:

Thorough, well thought-out centralised version control and release system. Allows constant availability of any build-version for testing, demos, or releases; Application of written unit-tests, for automatic execution; Comprehensive automated build, version-stamping, packaging and deployment of an application; Continual integration. A process of completely rebuilding and testing an application on a frequent basis to an environment realistic to the final production destination. This aides early defect repair and early problem detection; Peer reviews. All code is reviewed by other technical team members, to help spot logic errors, re-factor code, advise on quality, and foster a sense of joint-project ownership; Performance testing. Locate bottle-necks and other areas that can affect the desired level of responsiveness.

A well designed user-interface is crucial to an effective product, so Ixxus development teams ensure the following standards are applied to all user-interactive applications:

Accessibility. A thorough analysis of delivered web-pages to ensure that the largest audience possible is able to participate. Usability. Ensuring the interactive-design is easy and appropriate to use to achieve the tasks required by the user. Adherence to W3C standards (e.g. valid (X)HTML), to aid accessibility, maintenance and performance. Separation of the style (look and feel in the form of CSS) from the structured content (the semantic use of XHTML), and from the behaviour (through unobtrusive use of JavaScript). Graceful degradation allows pages to function for less-equipped browsers. Careful use of Ajax in the application. Ajax allows dynamic partial page updates and asynchronous communication with a server. Can improve the usability experience and (in some cases) performance, but only if correct design-patterns are applied.

We have a full structure to support the applications we develop and the technology partners we offer. Post project handover and training, we can provide support services to match the service levels you require, including;