One of the few development environments that's available on almost all hardware and operating systems is Java. We develop our software primarily in java so that our code is portable between all of these operating environments. This saves you, the customer, if you should grow and require a different platform for your website. It's almost as simple as copying it across.

Database vendors would love it if you wrote your database access code using their stored procedures. What they don't tell you is that if you do, you're locked into that vendor's product. Although stored procedures can produce increased performance for certain operations, the penalty is that you are tied to that vendor's proprietary procedural language. The solution is to stick with generic SQL code. That's what we do by default unless you request us to do different. Typically we use MySQL (MariaDB) as the database, but we can run against any standard SQL database you may wish, such as Oracle, DB2, PostreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, etc.

To meet your security requirements we can use SSL/HTTPS for secure communication. We can also use passphrase protection for all login accounts. As an added measure of security, we can encrypt those database fields that contain sensitive information, so that even if the database is penetrated, the sensitive information is still locked up.

All of the systems we recommend are open source. This means you don't have to shell out your hard-earned dollars for them. We host on Linux servers (very stable and the operating system is free) or in the Google Cloud. We use the MySQL database (very fast and also free). Our web server typically is Apache Tomcat (written in Java and also free). If you need a custom mail server, we use James (written in Java and free). We develop in Java (again, free). What you pay for is our time and effort only.