The Dictionary of Old English computing systems have provided access since the 1970s to a database of approximately three million running words. These systems, designed for a variety of machines and written in a variety of languages, have until recently been planned with computing center billing algorithms in mind. With personal workstations emphasis has shifted to building more elegant user interfaces and to providing the entire DOE database to editors around the world. While the shift from sequential files to random access files and the provision of extensive development tools have changed some of the design process, error checking and protection of the database against accidental intrusion have remained as central issues.