Criminal Case Records Web Site

The Requirements

An Ohio county needed to consolidate criminal case records from various municipalities in order to make them available on a secured web site. The county and each of the municipalities had their own separate system with no central reporting available. The system needed to:

• Provide 24x7 access to criminal records to law enforcement agencies.

• Data needed to be extracted from the county court system as well as each of the municipalities and then combined into a single database.

• The database needed to include arrest records, criminal case dockets and protection order case dockets.

• The web site needed to be password protected and provided the ability for an administrator to maintain user names and passwords.

• The web site also needed to show when the last update was made from each of the source systems.

The Solution

We analyzed the various source systems and developed a common database design that accommodated all available data. Then, working with the vendor of each system, we developed a process for extracting data daily from each system, transferring it to the county's web server via FTP and then importing the data into the common database using customized programs developed by MindCrafted Systems.

At the same time, we designed and developed a slick, no-nonsense, dynamic web site that provided easy access to the data for authorized individuals. The database driven site changed daily to reflect the changes in its underlying data.

Technology, Tools and Innovations

The database driving this web site was SQL Server and the customized programs that loaded it were written in Visual Basic. For the web site we used Visual Basic to create ActiveX components for database access and to enforce business rules. We invoked this from Active Server Pages.  

We used our own proprietary code generator to generate the code for the objects we used in Visual Basic. These objects were shared by the web site and the customized programs that loaded the database.