Archive for the ‘catalyst’ Category

Our Mission : Systems that last forever

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017

At a recent workshop, our MD was challenged with a question - "Why do you do what you do?" After some introspection a common theme from all our staff was that what makes us different is that we aim to build systems that will last FOREVER. Forever is a long time, ...

Travelyst goes mobile!

Tuesday, April 5th, 2016

ViaData has invited a group of Honours students in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town to invest in a project to "mobilise" Travelyst, ViaData's Tour Operator Software. The idea is to improve communication and accessibility with Travelyst end clients (the Traveller) through the use of a Travelyst Mobile ...

Travelyst Mobile Update

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

There are currently no platforms available in which travellers and travel consultants communicate directly with each other to manage a traveller’s documentation, itinerary and other information. Therefore, ViaData came up with the idea of making a mobile application for the front end of their Travelyst Tour Operator Software to achieve ...

Improvement – Security

Wednesday, October 14th, 2015

At ViaData, we use a generic template structure for security in our Catalyst Business Systems Engine for all our systems. For large systems, security access for users can be complex to implement, however for smaller systems with fewer users, or where all users play essentially the same role, it can ...

Improvement – Gridlock

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

Grid display Users asked us to create an export functionality for grids to be exported to Excel. We felt this was an important part of our continuous improvement program for both our Web clients and our Windows clients and so we put our heads together to solve the problem. Our grids of ...

Improvement – Travelyst

Monday, May 25th, 2015

This story is about our Travel Industry CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, Travelyst and how we improved the system and delighted the client in the process… The system provides a mechanism for travel consultants to build a detailed travel itinerary for customers. It supports a fairly generic processing of lines on ...

Are we creating a generation of dumbed-down developers?

Friday, November 1st, 2013

Object Relational Mappers (ORM) are creating dumbed-down developers! The aim of most ORM approaches is to hide the SQL from the developer - making it possible to develop for SQL databases without ever writing any SQL.  I believe this is resulting in a generation of dumbed-down developers who have no real ...

ViaData Featured on 5FM (National Radio)

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

ViaData was featured on 5FM Mind You Own Business. Technical Director, Alister Main, told DJ Fresh about the key thing that makes ViaData different – we build systems that WORK. Listen to the interview here Interview on Mind Your Own Business or read the post on 5FM’s website at //www.5fm.co.za/djs/Fresh/blog/mind-your-own-business-thursday-8-03-12 This is what Alister ...

2D barcodes & .mobi

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

In preparing some posters for the CSSE software expo, we were introduced to a fascinating new(ish) technology that is being used across the world to make sharing web addresses and information far easier and to utilize the power of the internet. We thought we'd would share it with you, as ...

ViaData’s Catalyst business systems engine featured at 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

As a result of our involvement in the recent Software Engineering Colloquium, we were asked by CITi to tell the story of Catalyst at a exhibition showcasing the local software industry. With many of the top software engineering brains in the world attending the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering ...