Strategic considerations in the choice of basic software and hardware for information systems in animal production

Prior to implementing any information system (IS), decisions have to be made about the basic software and hardware to be used. The choices greatly influence efficiency of implementation and future flexibility. Strategic goals developed are: hardware independence, future viability, expendability, operational safety, efficiency of programming and maintenance, and end-user evaluation. Choices are discussed on the basis of the established goals. As a result, a relational database was chosen. Application development was done using high-level tools, based on the non-procedural language SQL. With the rapid development of hardware over the last year, it is now possible to run to operating system UNIX on hardware in the PC class. This allows the use of a uniform and open operating system and identical application software on all computer systems irrespective of their size, ranging from personal computers to supercomputers.