vivid's range of technical experience runs both broad and deep. Our approach includes requirements analysis, prototyping, system architecture, detail design, production, and testing. And as the Web enables publishing on every platform imaginable, our engineers develop sites and tools on a wide variety of systems.

Operating Systems

In most cases our operating system of choice is Solaris from Sun Microsystems, essentially because most software written for the Web exists in a stable form for that platform. That being said, vivid engineers are also very experienced with HP-UX and IRIX from Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics, Inc., respectively, as well as the less commercialized UNIX variant, Linux. In addition to developing on these various flavors of UNIX, vivid maintains development servers on nearly all of these O/S's.

Outside of the UNIX world, vivid is adept at deploying NT systems. We also maintain NT development servers in-house, and we've deployed ASP-based sites where that technology was most appropriate. vivid is, consequently, intimately aware of the design, capabilities, and maintenance requirements of this operating system.

Databases

Obviously an operating system is merely a starting point. Most websites today are built on top of a solid relational or object-oriented database management system. In this sphere vivid's database developers are well versed in the disciplines of design (both logical and physical), integration, and maintenance of traditional RDBMS systems. We are particularly experienced with Informix and Oracle products, having designed dozens of systems on these two engines. For smaller projects we use the MySQL shareware RDBMS engine. In fact, our own Intranet uses this latter tool extensively. We also have a good deal of experience with ObjectStore, an OODBMS from ODI, having built a multi-purpose publishing platform on it. Beyond these core competencies, vivid engineers have developed sites and systems with other engines such as Sybase, and draw from deep competencies in database and data warehouse design and development.

Languages

In the middle of a Web system one finds a variety of languages and tools. vivid engineers have developed many other systems in a cornucopia of languages: Java, Java Script, C/C++, Perl, PHP, Tcl, and Visual Basic, and VB Script. vivid develops most systems with a solid object-oriented mindset, although it has done a fair amount of work based on structured designs. vivid is most familiar with PHP and Java, two of the most Web friendly languages available. PHP is a solid Web tool due to its powerful and flexible string handling capabilities. Java allows for more extensibility and reusability, especially if properly deployed on the server-side of the client-server equation.

Middleware

In addition to traditional CGI (the original standard for Web-based data exchange) and custom server-extensions, vivid develops systems on many different forms of middle-ware. The tools with which vivid engineers are most familiar are ATG's Dynamo, IBM's WebSphere, Leverage Information System's Locomotive, and Vignette's StoryServer. Contemporary application servers such as these allow for highly functional, scaleable, and extensible sites that can co-exist with a wide array of foundation technologies.

System Integration

vivid engineers have built systems that were coupled with a variety of enterprise applications, e-commerce trading systems, and fulfillment systems. vivid engineers are capable of designing and implementing the network infrastructure (e.g., hosting arrangements, hubs, routers, switches) necessary to support ...