Hi Kev,

I use Mere Mortals to develop all my applications. I trust that the framework will take care of all the minute details I'd have to handle if I were to write everything from scratch (locking, updates, rollbacks, etc.).

This forces me to really look at the solidity of my designs, which I in turn use UML for.

Now, to really answer your question, I have two apps that work together at our store (TimeClock and Payroll), which are fairly simple and straightforward, yet I took the time to create a formal model (which also evolved during the development process, as I added more features).

In spite of the apps being rather simple, I now have to make a few changes to them (to add features that we realized we need after using the system for about a year).

Here's where the savings came in: looking at code I wrote just weeks ago used to be a painful experience. With the models in place and a good OOP foundation, I'm able to very quickly go to the right places and implement the changes I need without fearing that I'm "breaking" anything like used to be the case a few years ago. In other words, with n-tier and a good model, I have saved myself a lot of aggravation.

Of course, you have to know where to draw the line and stop designing and start implementing. That's why I don't "close" either the analysis or implementation cycles and have both processes feed from one another. For instance, sometimes I'd implement a feature that is not in the model, so I update the model to reflect this (to keep the integrity of the design as it relates to the implementation).

I must say thought, that I'm using a LOGICAL 3-tier design (dictated by the framework itself), so I'm still talking to vfp tables in the back-end, but should I want to go ahead and use MSDE or SQL server, I won't need to tear apart the guts of any of the elements of the system.

And that's my honest opinion ;-)

Have fun!

Alex
>I want honest opinions on this, does anyone use full-blown OOP, n-tier development for EVERY application they write?, if it is required from the analysis.
>
>Analysis using UML defines a very strict OOP application, but I feel sometimes it's serious overkill for certain apps.
>
>What I want to know is, do you draw the line at some stage, what if you KNOW that your app is only a one off, and will never grow? Or at least be certain of it.
>
>I want some opinions, as I believe that there is a line between the practical and theory on this, which programmers can happily follow, whilst still following general principles.
>
>Thanks
>Kev