The Company

British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC was formed in 1922 and is a world leader in programme production, providing entertainment, education and information to millions of viewers and listeners at home and abroad through radio, television and online technologies.

Challenge

Under the BBC charter, all internal documents (from program scripts to letters of complaint to the Director General) must be stored for normal business reasons. Once they have ceased to have a business function they are reviewed and selected documents kept on a permanent basis as part of the official public records. This creates a unique archival and cataloguing requirement. The BBC Document Archives branch were looking to provide an integrated system to replace over 30 separate DataEase for DOS databases that had been developed for this task.

Solution

Following an initial Project Definition, the BBC contracted Sapphire to undertake a full System Specification to design a system to meet their requirements for a new integrated system. Following this the BBC then contracted Sapphire to develop the system.

The outcome

Sapphire have developed a system called Daisy (Document Archives Information System) using NetPlus and SQL Server which provides a single common database covering all the catalogued documents throughout their lifecycle. The system is accessed from all the main BBC locations in London and the Written Archive Centre in Caversham.