Michael,

I would spend more time in talking the client into new tables at least for the reasons you have listed below.
You may argue that it is cheaper to think your own tables then cruel stuff from third party?
It should normaly be not that tricky to write an import for the old data. If you have fears to open that stuff for import I would suggest to open it straight, copy it to csv, reimport it into your format and import that. Using this way you will get "plain" data without touching somebodies "code".
This is like exporting Word document to RTF and manipulate this like you want. You do not need to into the deeps of it internals.

HTH
Agnes

>A potential client want to rewrite an existing application for many reasons but mostly due to poor service, bugs galore, etc from their existing programmer. They're suggesting I use the existing tables so as not to lose historical data. Without going into the logic for me to use their tables, does this violate copyright? The company does not own the code and the programmer won't give/sell it to them. As I see it, the code is the contractors but the tables are 100% the company's. But on the other hand, the contractor "wrote" the tables so it then is his "code". Please set me straight here.
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>This is not the first time I've encountered this problem so I guess it must happen around the world. ( The tables are NOT normalised, key words are used for field names, etc so I would be very happy for this to all go away as a copyright issue )
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>Thanks