City of Tshwane (Pretoria)

The Company

The City of Tshwane was established in December 2000 when various municipalities and councils that had previously served the greater Pretoria and surrounding areas were integrated, amongst them the City Council of Pretoria. The City of Tshwane is inhabited by approximately 2.2 million people. Its Housing and Environmental Management Department (HEMD) is responsible for making environmental considerations part of every strategy and operation of the City of Tshwane, to conserve and utilize Tshwane's nature areas, and to promote and maintain outdoor leisure facilities, such as resorts and swimming pools, in a way that will benefit residents and visitors to the City.

The Challenge

To help manage their core activities and other administrative tasks, the HEMD of the City of Tshwane used DataEase for DOS to create a series of comprehensive (and large) applications - these included modules such as Personnel, Finance, Receipting, Nursery and City Afforestation. In recent times with incompatibility problems with Windows XP and a user demand for a Windows look and feel, the City of Tshwane decided to convert these applications to a Windows product.

Solution

Familiar with the flexibility and ease of use of DataEase, they decided to stay with DataEase and upgrade their system to the latest Windows version. They commissioned KC Solutions, their outsourced System Developers, to perform the conversions. With over 100 networked users accessing these applications daily, the task at hand called for a modular approach. With many years experience in DataEase, KC Solutions was able to cater for this and complete the conversion in just 6 months.

Process

K.C Solutions did a direct conversion (following Sapphire's conversion guidelines), and once the systems went live and all users were happy with the changes, they started implementing some of DataEase 6's new functionality. They also used Webpublisher to publish forms for the use of budgeting and prioritisation, for the IDP Department.

The outcome

The HEMD was very pleased with their newly converted system but what they appreciated most was the fact that any aspects of their applications can be adjusted very quickly and easily to suit their changing requirements. They can also publish forms for Internet access, a major plus for their users.
KC Solutions commented: "Everything the client required was done in DataEase with ease, so this is definitely our database development software of choice".

The Developers

K.C Solutions was established in 1990. They have developed various systems successfully from mailing applications to complex integrated systems for private and local government institutions.