>I think I understand where Mike is coming from. When you're maintaining a massive legacy system that has a bad data model, as long as it works at all you sometims have to work around it until you convince the powers that be to remodel it.

John,

One of the benefits of being an independent is that I don't have to do that ever. I can just walk away and let someone else take the flack because the new system is just as bad as the original.