A Web Application can be, but is not normally, a public Web site. It has a completely different function. It is meant to be a program that runs on the Web that performs one or more business functions.

For example someone may have an Access program they want translated to the Web. So you take the features of the Access application and reprogram them to work on the Web.

Although Web applications are getting better and better every year, your program will not work the same way on the Web as it did on a Windows system.

The question you want to ask yourself is why do you want to do this? If it is just because it is the newest and coolest technology, that is not a good reason to do it. It does take longer and costs more to get a Web Application to work the same as a Windows Application. So you need to have a compelling reason to do this.

If you have a client base that is out of the office or all over the country or world, THEN it makes sense. Sometimes you only need to put a subset your main office software on the Web, this can save a lot of time in Development. Think about what really needs to be in your Web Application.

The goal of creating a Web Application is to help save you time. It may also provide you and your company with a lot more convenience. If the is not true you should not pursue the development of a Web Application

Some people also care about what technology we may use. Here is a partial list, since we use whatever it takes to get the job done.

• ASP.NET
• PHP
• ASP
• XHTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Microsoft SQL Server
• PostgreSQL
• Firebird

We have done many Web Applications over the years:

Daily Underwrites of America
We created an agent portal to allow their Insurance agents from all over the country to manage insurance applications, handle endorsements, track money due, and review the claim history of their clients.

Advanced Aeromedical
This company handled the distribution of medical oxygen equipment all over the world. They interacted with airlines, cruise lines, service vendors, and medical patients who needed the services. They did all this work with Word, and Excel, and paper and pencil. They hired the Hightower Group to create a Web Application that would operate all over the world. So vendors, airlines, and cruise line could login at any time and see what is going on at any given time.
The Result: Saving huge amounts of time and money and providing assurance that the all the information about every case is one location and easy to find.

Superior Walls of America
The has a commercial software that they needed to control access to. So we created a Web Application that maintained a list of all their clients, their access codes and their expire dates. When an access code expires the client could log in to get a new code.
Results: This reduced the number of phone calls for people asking for access codes.  It also provided an automatic means of letting the users know their code needed updating.  Both results saved a lot of time for the staff of Superior Walls fo America.

Bensalem Township School District
We created a Web Application to manage their Report Card system for their elementary schools. This required an extensive database design to hold all the data points. Since elementary schools have many different grade criteria. Also they had us integrate with their Oracle system that contained all the Student and teacher information.
Results: This system reduced the amount of paper work moving through the system.  Also teachers could always update the grades of there students, so if anything was wrong or missing it could be corrected Immediatly.