When disaster strikes, volunteers from the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) are there to provide emotional support and comfort to victims.

Getting volunteers to a disaster site efficiently requires agile databases that can be quickly and easily updated, compared and synchronized. To meet its unique needs, NOVA has enlisted the help of an IT consultant who is using SQL Server technology, Microsoft Access, and SQL tools from Red Gate Software to create a single-source database called NovaOne.

"NOVA provides early psychological intervention to individuals dealing with the emotional impact of man-made or natural disasters, criminal acts or terrorism," says Jeannette Adkins, the organization's executive director. "The new database will make a major difference in locating the ideal trained responders for a particular response we're working on."

The constantly evolving database pulls together information, not only about volunteers who have been trained as crisis responders, but also members, conference attendees, operations staff and those who make charitable donations. This is in contrast to NOVA's previous system, which comprised separate databases, Excel spreadsheets and files that had to be cross-referenced manually – a less accurate, more time-consuming process.

"Our new database enables us to pull up a name and determine that, yes, this person is a member of NOVA as a victim assistance professional, and has also been trained in community crisis response," says Adkins. "We can look at the whole picture as opposed to working with the fragmented system we had before."

Members can now manage their membership and register for conferences via the web, but in the future they will be able to sign up for crisis training, manage personal information, and take advantage of other services. In the longer term, the database will be rolled out to the organization's 7,000 crisis responders.

"One of the main goals of this project is to reduce the number of administrative-type calls NOVA receives," says Ken Weinberger, whose company, Anchor Consulting, is developing NovaOne as part of its ongoing IT role with the organization. "People can renew their membership or provide updated address information online, which frees the staff to do other things. In the non-profit world, where organizations are always understaffed and overworked, that's extremely important."

System nuts and bolts

Weinberger maintains two SQL Servers at an Anchor Consulting office in New Jersey, one for development and the other for mock production. At the NOVA site in Alexandria, Va., he uses two more SQL Servers, one each for development and live production. This enables him to do development work at his office and move it to mock production for testing before going live on the server in Virginia. If he's on-site and immediate development is needed, the hardware is available there.

Weinberger uses Microsoft Access as the graphical interface for the system, which ties into the SQL Server. The decision to use Access as the system's front end was based strictly on available funds. Weinberger says that other solutions may be more flexible, but contends that Access is a more rapid development environment, more cost effective, and meets the needs for this project.

Rounding out his software arsenal are PHP, the general-purpose scripting language for delivering and customizing dynamic web pages, and Red Gate Software's SQL Compare^® and SQL Data Compare, used for comparing and synchronizing database schema and contents.

These tools enable Weinberger to do the development work at Anchor Consulting and then promote it to the mock production database for rigorous testing before migrating it to the live production database at NOVA.

"The mock production database mirrors NOVA's setup, containing a copy of its domain server and one of its computers," says Weinberger. "This ensures that changes won't bring the live system down."

Saving database comparison time

To synchronize changes between development and mock production that he has made in, say, membership types or other system tables, Weinberger relies on SQL Data Compare.

There is a different fee structure for conference registration types, depending on who is registering, whether or not they are a member, and the date of registration, since the fees go up as the conference approaches. Some of those registration types can also sign up for a lunch or a special seminar, so there are numerous variables.

"I track the system tables to which I made data-only changes, select them in SQL Data Compare, and hit synchronize," says Weinberger. "It's that simple. Data Compare takes care of everything – deleting, updating and adding records as necessary."

Weinberger admits that he could do the scripting to migrate these changes manually, but says that Data Compare does a remarkably good job in less time than it would take doing the scripting himself. And as a consultant to a non-profit, he is acutely aware that time is money.

"I would have to keep real strict track of exactly what changes were made," he says. "Data Compare does that for me. The time it takes to parse through errors is not an issue anymore."

There is an archive of every version of the database so Weinberger can roll back to a previous version if necessary. But when moving forward with complex schema changes, there is no fall back – all errors must be resolved.

"SQL Compare, the other tool I use, is critical here," he says. "I can add or delete a column in a table and it will make it through to the various production databases, saving me hours. I simply select the tables I want to compare and it shows me the ones that are different."

NOVA hopes to complete the core of the project this year. As needs dictate, new functionality will be added, which, according to Weinberger, was the idea behind the original plan.

Weinberger and Adkins are pleased with the progress being made on NovaOne, if for different reasons. Weinberger is saving time and money for his client. Adkins is watching a system develop that will help NOVA improve its ability to bring services to victims in need, and provide training and technical assistance for its membership.

For more information about NOVA, see www.trynova.org. Information about Anchor Consulting can be found at www.anchorcon.com; the company's technical consulting division, Nexario Solutions, can be reached at 1-800-NEXARIO.