Technology We Use

Clearly Software are experts in Microsoft technologies and use these to develop the majority of our solutions. We do sometimes use other technologies if we feel it is better suited, or if specifically requested.

We use Microsoft technologies because they cover most areas that are required within business today, and they provide the best development tools in the industry.

Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365

Microsoft Office is the most used business software in the world. Many of our solutions are built within Microsoft Office because many businesses already use it and want to carry on using it. Plus, smaller solutions developed within Microsoft Office regularly work out cheaper than fully bespoke software.

Excel and Access are the two most popular applications that we use to develop solutions, although we can develop solutions using most of the Microsoft Office Suite.

We also use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to develop macros and add-ins within the Microsoft Office applications. This means we can automate time consuming processes making your solutions even more efficient.

Visual Studio

This is the world leading software development platform from Microsoft. It can be used to develop software, mobile apps, cloud apps and websites.

There are many programming languages available in Visual Studio. For most of our software development we use C#, and occasionally VB.NET (if specifically requested).

We use Windows Platform Foundation (WPF) for creating user interfaces but can use Windows Forms (WinForms) if specifically requested.

We use ASP.NET, along with CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript when we are developing cloud apps.

We use .NET MAUI for developing apps on other platforms, and for cross platform apps. 

JetBrains Rider

This is an alternative to Visual Studio that can be used on Mac as well as Windows. This is used when we are developing for IOS or Mac OS. 

We can use all the same technologies in Rider as we we do in Visual Studio.  

SQL

This is a very powerful database system that is capable of running databases of all sizes. 

SQL databases can be hosted locally on a pc/laptop, on server for network access, or in the cloud.

We us SQL for all of our non Access database solutions, unless an alternative is specifically requested by the client. 

Azure

This is the cloud computing platform provided by Microsoft and is what we use for all our cloud-based projects.

This platform can be used for hosting apps & websites, storing files, hosting virtual machines, hosting databases and much more.