CDE has specialised in supporting databases since 1999.

Whatever you’re running — Microsoft Access, SQL Server, MySQL, or something bespoke that somebody built a long time ago — if the business depends on it, we can look after it.

Ring ☎ and you’ll speak to someone who works on databases every day. No call centre, no first-line script, no ticket sitting in a queue overnight.

BLOCK 2 — Out of hours and urgent cover

⚠️ Block needs CDE’s answer before publishing — see notes. There is real demand behind it.

Databases rarely fail at 10am on a Tuesday. They fail during the overnight run, over a bank holiday weekend, or at 6am when the first shift can’t log in.

[CDE to confirm: standard hours, whether out-of-hours cover is available, whether it’s an arrangement or ad-hoc, and what response looks like.]

If it’s urgent right now, ring rather than email → emergency database support

Systems somebody else built

This is most of what we do.

The original developer has retired or moved on. The supplier has been dissolved. The person in the office who “sort of understood it” left two years ago. Nobody wants to touch it, and the business runs on it every day.

We take those on:

  • Work out what it actually does, where the data lives, and what’s holding it together
  • Fix the long-standing problems everyone’s been working around
  • Document what matters, so the knowledge belongs to you rather than to one person
  • Support it day to day, with changes as well as fixes
  • Tell you honestly what’s worth improving and what isn’t

→ legacy software rescue

Database management

[IMG-1] — Monitoring output or a maintenance report: backup verification, growth trend, job status. Redacted. This block sells recurring work, and recurring work is bought on evidence of diligence.
Alt: Database management and monitoring report

Keep your systems running smoothly and guard against disaster. Outsource the regular checks, analysis and maintenance to people who do it all day.

  • Backups verified by restoring them, not by reading a green job log
  • Integrity checks run regularly, so corruption is found in days rather than discovered in a crisis
  • Maintenance that actually maintains — indexes, statistics, log management, the housekeeping nobody set up
  • Growth and capacity tracked, so you know before the disk fills or a file limit is reached
  • Performance monitored against a baseline, so “it’s got slower” becomes a number
  • Security and access reviewed, including the accounts belonging to people who’ve left
  • Alerting on what matters, so you hear it from us rather than from your users

Peace of mind is the product. Most of our management clients go months without needing to ring, which is the point.

→database health check

Troubleshooting

Database or system running slow? Can’t find the source of the errors? We diagnose and advise on how to improve it.

  • Errors nobody can explain, including the ones that only happen for one user
  • Performance that’s degraded gradually, and performance that changed overnight
  • Multi-user conflicts, locking and timeouts
  • Reports and exports that have stopped working, or produce figures that don’t add up
  • Failures after a Windows, Office or application update
  • Connection, network and permissions problems
  • Data that’s wrong and nobody knows why

We find the cause rather than the symptom, and tell you in plain English what it’ll take to fix.

database repair · database performance tuning

Help and advice

Sometimes you don’t need a project. You need half an hour with somebody who knows.

Stuck on something, want a second opinion before a decision, need to know whether what you’ve been quoted is reasonable, or just want a quick bit of guidance — ring us. We won’t start a sales process over it.

☎

Changes, not just fixes

Most calls aren’t breakages. They’re a report finance needs, an extra field, a process that’s changed, a customer wanting something the system was never built to do.

We do that work as it comes. Small changes usually go through in days. Anything bigger gets scoped and priced first so you decide whether it’s worth doing.

Nothing gets rebuilt because we fancied rebuilding it.

How support works

  • Ad-hoc — ring when you need us, billed for the time
  • Support agreement — an agreed allowance each month, with a response commitment and priority over ad-hoc work
  • Managed — we take responsibility for keeping it running: monitoring, backups tested, maintenance, and problems raised before your users find them

Whichever it is, you’re dealing with the same people each time, and they already know your system.

→ [LINK: how we work → /about/howwework/] · [LINK: remote and ongoing support → /about/remotesupport/]

Whatever you’re running

Microsoft Access support  · SQL Server support · MySQL support

Bespoke system, mixed environment, or genuinely not sure what you’ve got? That’s fine — working it out is part of the job.

Emergency Database Support

System down and the business stopped. Ring, don't email.

Find out more...
Database Health Check

Independent review — including whether your backups restore.

Find out more...
Database Recovery & Data Rescue

Corruption, lost data and failed restores.

Find out more...

Case studies

all case studies

Tell us what you're running

What the system does, who built it, and what's going wrong. We'll tell you whether we can support it, what that would look like and what it costs — even if nobody's touched it in ten years.

Send us the details → Call 0114 249 1036 →