Database Design and Development

The data layer behind your site or app, built to be fast, accurate and worth trusting

The Part Nobody Sees Until It Breaks

Your database is where everything your business knows actually lives — customers, orders, bookings, stock, the lot. It rarely gets a thought while it's behaving. Then a page that used to load in a blink starts to crawl, two records that should agree don't, or a report you've relied on quietly starts coming out wrong. Whoooop Ltd designs and builds the data side of websites and applications, and fixes the data side of ones that have started to creak. We've worked in full-stack development for over 15 years, so the database isn't an afterthought bolted on at the end — it's the thing everything else stands on.

Signs the Data Is the Problem

Most people don't go looking for "database work" by name. They notice a symptom and trace it back. Usually it's one of these:

  • A page or report that used to be quick now drags, and it gets worse as your records pile up
  • The same customer or product shows up two or three times, slightly different each way
  • Numbers don't reconcile — stock on the site doesn't match the shelf, totals don't add up
  • You've outgrown a spreadsheet, and now several people are editing it and treading on each other
  • You're nervous about changing anything because nobody's sure what a change might knock over

What We Do With a Database

Designing the data model

How the information is structured before a line of app code gets written — what's stored, how the pieces relate, and what has to be unique. Get this right and a whole class of "why don't these two agree?" problems never happens.

Tracking down slow queries

Finding the specific queries dragging a page down and fixing them — adding the right indexes, rewriting the ones doing too much work. This is the back-end side of speed; the browser-side half lives on our website speed optimisation page.

Cleaning up messy data

Merging duplicates, reconciling records that drifted apart, and putting validation in place so bad data can't wander back in once it's sorted.

Migrations you can undo

Changing the shape of a live database — adding fields, moving data, restructuring — done in steps that are reversible, so a schema change doesn't mean holding your breath.

Off the spreadsheet, onto something solid

Moving a business that's outgrown a shared spreadsheet onto a proper database, where several people can work at once and the rules live in one place instead of in someone's head.

Backups and integrity that hold up

Constraints that stop the data contradicting itself, plus backups that have actually been restored at least once — because a backup nobody's tested is just a hope.

SQL or NoSQL? It Depends on the Data

There's a fashion to this, and we try to ignore it. The honest answer is that the data decides. When your information has a clear shape and lots of relationships — customers who place orders that contain products, the kind of thing where consistency really matters — a relational database like PostgreSQL is usually the right home, and it's what we reach for most. When the shape varies a lot from one record to the next, or you're storing things that don't fit neat rows, a document store like MongoDB (or DynamoDB on AWS) can be the better fit. Plenty of projects end up using both for different jobs. We'll tell you which way we'd lean and why, in plain terms, rather than picking whatever's trendy.

Working on a Database You Already Have

A lot of this work is on databases we didn't build — often ones where the person who set it up has long gone and nobody quite knows how it hangs together. That's fine. We start by mapping what's there and understanding how it's used before touching anything, because a live database has real customers' data in it and there's no "undo" on a careless change. From there we can tidy, speed up, restructure or migrate, at a pace that doesn't put your day-to-day at risk. Often the database is only one part of a bigger picture — if it's feeding an app, that connects to our web application development work, and joining it to other systems is covered on our API development and integration page.

Why Whoooop for Database Work

  • 15+ years of full-stack experience, so the data model is designed by someone who'll also build what sits on top of it
  • Genuine grounding in both relational and document databases — PostgreSQL, MongoDB and DynamoDB — not a one-tool shop
  • Careful with live data: changes made in reversible steps, on something we understand first
  • Straight advice on whether your problem is really the database, the hosting, or the code around it
  • We stay on after the work, so database upkeep can fold into ongoing maintenance rather than being left to drift

Something Not Right With Your Data?

Tell us what's going wrong — slow, messy, duplicated, or just outgrown — and we'll talk through the sensible way to sort it.

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