>>Frameworks are the best investment a team can make,
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>Yes, I have a copy of Mere Mortals (latest version with EF integration). I'm the only C# programmer (albeit a beginner+) in the shop.
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>>Bill's advice may work exactly as he says it does for him, but the idea of doing a complex app that way would terrify me. It's like the days when people got VFP then wrote FPDOS-like code directly against tables in 2 tier apps and were astounded they had problems later on networks and WANs and in moving to a SQL backend.
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>I personally believe that our apps get very complicated.
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>>If you're not going with WPF and really like to stick with straight sql check out what Strataframe or MereMortals brings to the table. If your team doesn't already know *about* Linq and finds it scarey you've got some people who *need* the structure of a framework that takes care of things they don't even know are issues.
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>Agreed. I think if our non-C# programmers think LINQ/EF is complicated they will have a complete meltdown when they see how tedious working with datasets, et al. is like.
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>>"Roll your own" is exactly the wrong approach for a group like this. Get some help from the framework builders that have been dealing with this stuff for 10 years now while they've been programming in Foxpro.
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>Unfortunately, we are a non-profit organization where money is tight and I think management will balk at the price of buying a Framework ($699 per developer for MM) and we'll end up rolling our own. Although MM does go down to $399 per year per developer for renewals. Still...

Given the skill level of your developers it would probably be more cost efficient to cut the development staff, buy the frameworks and be way more productive <g>