We have a vast amount of code and tools developed since we started writing 4D in 1994. This means that we can quickly write a new system without reinventing the wheel each time. This “shell” has many prebuilt features, on top of which we add your custom requirements. Some of these prebuilt features are:

• contact manager & address book
• client/server scalable to over 100 simultaneous users
• cross platform: Win 95, 98, XP, Mac OS 9, OSX
• logging of every action in the system
• automated backups and continuous transaction logging (allowing restoration of systems to within seconds of any system failure)
• user access levels customisable to very fine degree over any part of the system. Read, write, add, delete access.
• flexible printing manager
• email integration
• MYOB integration
• sophisticated deletion and data integrity control (particularly for financial systems)
• intra-office server replication (for remote offices)
• web server integration

What this means to you is that we are already half way there with most of what you probably want. So the results are less expensive and faster than writing from scratch.

We have a demo system that demonstrates these basic functions.

In the meantime, please take a look at case studies of some of our deployed systems. For web based systems we prefer to use WebObjects for the power, scalability and speed of development. We can integrate these systems with 4D or create a web site directly out of 4D itself using its integrated web server.