Perry,

no discussion on the merit of having qualified people. But arguing to have the right people to write the basic layers sounds wrong: why create [this much] for yourself ? Even in relatively small markets like vfp you can get a boost by frameworks very cheap compared to the value added. For large project this -in the best cases - translates into making some packages work together, sometimes into recreating a pentagon and an octagon and praising it as the best wheel-combination ever<g> - but IMHO on java projects too much is spent on infrastructure, even considering balloning cost found in large projects. Anything similar happening at your side ?

curious

thomas