Steve there are a large number of foxpro programmers working in state government in a number of the fiscal offices. There are also a number of developers writing programs for various state agencies. I myself have VFP applications currently running at the Dept of Ag., Dept of Insurance, Dept of Revenue, AHCA which are quite large applications. In those cases they contract with me for the maintenance and it rarely involves more than a few hours a year. The biggest problem usually is the IT staffs can not configure the EDA ODBC drivers needed to access the Comptrollers data. Some of these program are over 5-6 years old.

The advantage that you provide is that he will get a customized program and can work the way he want as opposed to a canned program in which he will have to adopt to the way the progam was written. I have seen very few canned program which work the way you want.

Let him know that if you should leave that he can operate like a lot of other agencies do which is to outsource the maintenance.

Call me if you have any other questions(893-3823).


Gaylen


>I work for a small government agency in Florida. I am the only IT staff member. The office depends on an application that I have written for it's operation. My boss has become concerned that I am the only one who can support this application. More importantly, he is concerned that if I leave (I have no intentions), or Die, the office will be left in a lurch.
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>Can anyone recommend suggestions that I can use to alleviate my boss' concerns about application support. He is considering moving the office to a canned program. While this does have benefits in the area of support, it will cause major upheaval/stress for all employees, and our in-house application is tailored to our office and can be changed to suit our whims. Certainly someone has encountered similar problems before.
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>Thanks much, Steve.