A profound knowledge of IT technology and - more fundamentally - the field of Software Engineering is the starting point of all West's activities. We have also acquired extensive market and domain-related knowledge over the 20+ years that we have been in operation. Our added value is thus our ability to empathise with our relations' problems, find solutions to these problems and use our technological knowledge and experience to put these solutions in place.
Technology is hardly ever key, yet it is always necessary in the end. Although our profound knowledge of Software Engineering enables us to quickly master a large variety of techniques and tools, we have chosen a basis consisting of state-of-the-art techniques and tools which we think contribute greatly to solutions that are reliable and flexible, and that secure the future success of our relations.
| West has extensive experience with Java technology, such as the Java programming language (J2ME, J2SE and J2EE) and JSP. |
West has witnessed the development of Sun Microsystems (founder of the Java programming language) in the Netherlands right from the start. As we are constantly on the look out for developments that improve the quality of our work and products, we chose Java as our "first language of choice". This does not mean to say, however, that we have taken our focus off other programming languages. Our choice of specialisation led to us being the first ever company in the Netherlands to be awarded the accreditation Authorized Java Centre. We have also closely followed all the developments that have subsequently taken place in this area. And we have carried out a large number of projects using Java technology.
| In terms of web services, West has experience with: XML (including scheme definitions), XSLT, WSDL and SOAP. |
As an extension of its knowledge and experience in the field of Java, West now frequently also uses web services. Interfaces between the various different modules and parties are defined in WSDL and different implementations of the SOAP clients and servers are made using Axis and Apache SOAP. In the context of performance improvement, a web service proxy server that can cache SOAP calls and results was built, thus reducing the load of the SOAP server.
| West has extensive experience with UNIX (BSD, v5), Linux (Red Hat and Debian), Solaris (various versions) and HP-UX. We also have experience with UNIX-related script languages such as sed, awk, JavaScript, Perl, Python and shell scripts. |
A software application always needs an underlying software platform: an operating system. The following operating systems can be distinguished: Microsoft Windows (2000, 2003, XP, Vista), UNIX/Linux and MacOS. West prefers to use UNIX/Linux as its basis, although from time to time we also carry out Windows projects. We favoured UNIX from the start because the design was safer, more reliable and better than that of the Windows family, for instance. In short, it was an OS platform that we could feel confident about recommending to our clients.
We were involved in the transfer from UNIX, including system software (compilers, etc.), to a microprocessor-based hardware platform (which then served as the basis for a state-of-the-art CAD workstation used by TNO) right from our early years. The civil-engineering software running on this station was used by the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management for the Delta Works and the Oosterschelde Dam. This and other projects enabled us to gain an enormous amount of experience, from which we still benefit today.
UNIX has now largely been replaced by Linux. We also closely followed and learnt to master this development, which is why we are now widely regarded as Linux experts.
| Open-source products used by West: Tomcat, JBoss, mySQL, PostgresSQL, ... |
When software products are developed nowadays, existing components are almost always used, whether it be with generic functionality (such as databases, application servers, etc.) or business-specific functionality. And West makes use of this; after all, there's no need to reinvent something that's working perfectly well.
| Closed-source products applied by West: Oracle, Xelion. |
A distinction can be made amongst the multitude of products on the market between open-source products (that can often be used for free, depending on the licence conditions) and closed-source (proprietary) products.
 It is often difficult to select the right open-source product. West colleague Marco Nijdam wrote an article on this for the professional magazine 'Informatie'. |
Open-source products are often based on open standards in order to prevent dependency on certain market players. We therefore prefer to use open-source products, although in a number of cases it can be better to choose specific market solutions.
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West uses the following development tools:
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We apply the same open-source philosophy that we propagate for our clients in our own method of working. We mainly use open-source development tools in this software process.