Hi,

I'm working on a project and would like opinions.

I'm building a customized application that will interface with a software package. Before I started working on this app a lot of work had been done to modify the accounting package (MAS) to try to do what the custom app is going to do, so basically they were trying to make the accounting package do more than it was built to do.

The database for the accounting package is in a SQL 2000 database. My custom app is in a SQL 2000 database also. Here's the dilema. A previous programmer created already started creating the custom app and he created some tables in the accounting database, his reasoning is that since the customized programs is so tightly integrated to the accounting software then it might as well be in the same database to make life easier.

Now I come into the picture, I'm extending this customized app and creating tables. The logical thing is to create a new database and access whatever tables from the accounting database I need and I also need to update some information there.

My thinking is that I should create a different database but I'm a bit concerned about transactions among different databases which I'm about to research but if anybody has some comments on this I would definitely appreciate it.

Well back to the original issue; the other programmer is very set on having the tables on the same database as the accounting package, he says it will make his life simpler (which it does in a sense) and why make it more difficult b/c have to switch between 2 databases in his program. But I would like to separate them b/c it's becoming messy to have so much information (tables,stored procedures) about 2 different systems on the same database. Unless I see any issues related to working with 2 databases (on the same server) in terms of transaction integrity or making the programs more difficult to code (using VFP 8.0) then I would like to create a new datase.

What do you guys think?