The City of Naperville, Illinois, has recently implemented a GIS-based street lighting outage repair system. Detailed outage maps make it easier for field crews to find outages, and optimal routing maps make the repair process more cost efficient. Time spent on estimating repair costs has been reduced, and areas that require equipment upgrades are easily identified. This paper will detail the benefits of linking traditional databases, such as Microsoft Access, to a GIS system using Esri's MapObjects. Topics covered will include design strategies, realistic implementation schedules, overcoming problems with Visual Basic for applications, linking results to ArcView GIS using SQL Connect, and plans for future improvements.