Blueberry Consultants is an expert developer of standalone and client server applications for Microsoft Windows.

Blueberry has been developing software for Windows for over 10 years, and has worked on every major version of Windows from Windows 3.1 to Vista.

We have an unusually wide and deep range of expertise. About 50% of our work involves the creation of standard business systems, using Microsoft .NET and SQL Server. But our depth of expertise means we also get asked to take on more technical projects. For example, we’ve recently been involved in a system that required us to create a video phone – and we previously created an online 3D model of a laptop for a major manufacturer.

If you have a project or idea which is unusual or technically challenging, just give us a call and we can provide instant advice on how to solve it. Creative solutions a speciality!

Developing applications on Windows means, above all, being adaptable: the set of tools and technologies provided by Microsoft continually evolves, and in response to this, and other technologies, so does Blueberry.

For new systems, our preferred development platform is now Microsoft .NET, because we’ve found it to be significantly more productive than previous technologies. However, we still retain strong skills with C++ , which we can use to overcome any performance or technical issues we may find with .NET.

For most business applications, we recommend and use MS SQL Server as the information store. For further information on this topic – including the Free MS SQL Express and how it compares with MySQL, please see the Database Systems Page.

One of the most significant technical developments in recent years has been the growth in the market for development components. These are pre-packaged code modules that solve particular problems – such as writing PDF files, displaying charts, or even integrating a complete set of graphic drawing tools into a program.

Utilising components reduces the cost of development and generally leads to a significantly higher quality level for the same project budget.

We have strong experience of evaluating and selecting the best components for our customer’s projects.

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is an exciting new technology released in October 2008 by Microsoft, which promises to make it easier to develop rich graphical applications. SilverLight is a cut down version of WPF and .NET, specifically packaged for use online, within browsers. SilverLight promises to significantly reduce the costs of developing rich, media-intensive online applications.

Blueberry spent time training and learning these new technologies in summer 2008, and we started our first SilverLight projects in November 2008.

Please click here to read our introduction to SilverLight and our evaluation of the benefits.