Mobile Field Services

Back End Integration

The most important element with any hand held mobile data collection system is integration into the back end corporate database. What we have found is that integrating with accounting packages that have a non-proprietary database backend - with clean table definitions - provides for the fastest and most reliable mobile integrations. Most packages today have an ODBC database which allow for a seamless integration between the data captured while in the field, and the back end database.

Emkat has experience with most of the common database table's used by businesses to run their entire operation. Listed are definitions of database types in which we have done custom integration into.

Flat-File

The flat-file style of database are ideal for small amounts of data that needs to be human readable or edited by hand. They are made up of is a set of strings in one or more files that can be parsed to gather the information they store.

Relational

The relational databases such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2 and Oracle, have a much more logical structure in the way that it stores data. Tables can be used to represent real world objects, and each field is an attribute. The "relation" comes from the fact that the tables can be linked to each other. These kind of relations can be quite complex in nature, and would be hard to replicate in the standard flat-file format.

An advantage of the relational model is that if a database is designed correctly, there should be no duplication of any data; which maintains database integrity. This is a must when dealing with large amounts of data and queries.