>Hi Bret:
>
>I feel your pain! NMCI is wreaking havoc on my life too.
>
>I just found out yesterday all legacy applications must be converted to web apps by 2004. They also have written a very detailed spec on how they should be structured: Three-tier with XML for messaging.
>
>This is good news to me because it means new and more challenging work, but they are not allowing VFP on any tier. However they are allowing C#, VB and SQL Server which comes as a surprise to me because I thought they were pretty much all Oracle.
>
>They are gonna start installing the new desktops soon. And from what I hear, the users will not be able to change anything on them. They are calling them "locked down". This is going to make it very difficult to support my apps as they will no longer allow them to download EXE's over the LAN for updates. Also, I hear if you want to make a change it has to be approved by some organization on the west coast before you can install it on a client.
>
>Things are just starting to happen. It gonna be interesting to see how things turn out.
>
>Charlie

Our base is one of the first to get on board the NMCI band wagon. I think the people who made the decision wanted Crane to look good to the people in Washington. But so far it has been a struggle.

My computer has been declared as an 'Enhanced Hybrid' so I dont get a new one and I get to develop my VFP apps and exes. But those who are my users are under the NMCI lock down computer mode and yes I feel that getting updates to them will be a pain. I know about the West Coast tester that has control over what is added to any locked down machine, but the good news for me and my users is this. NMCI cannot for any reason stop a person from doing there day-to-day tasks. If they do then the hammer will come down on them hard. So if my users cant get to their data or the updates in a timely fashion then NMCI's contract will be considered as being violated. And believe me I will make sure that my users have the same support as they always have had for data and exe updates. If NMCI gets in the way or prevents people from using the systems then our department will begin our way up the NMCI contract food chain. The aggreement for NMCI is that it will not have any downtime at all for a person to do there job. Which I think will never happen in the transition phase. You cant take full control over a persons machine and never think that all programs will work.

I spent part of yesterday answering the questions about my systems and how they will be affected by NMCI. The one I loved the most was 'Our computers will all be running MS Win 2000 OS and OFFICE 2000, will your applications be affected by the OS or Office applications?' Well my answer was this, my apps have never been tested under MS 2000 OS as we dont own it right now, so no testing could ever be done.