Hi Hilmar

My understanding is that the bank was too busy with other projects to add this to their list. The consulting company helping them solve the CRM problem knew that the market did not have a product that met their need and felt the bank should develop it. So he wanted to reduce the risk of failing to produce the product on time and felt a prototype would help the bank visualize the advantages of developing a product that exactly met their need. I had done work for this consulting firm before and we worked well together so I built the prototype.

I had hoped I would get the opportunity to do the ASP.net version as it would have been a great way to get some experience with dot.net. At present I do not have any customers wanting a dot.net solution. It appears to me that dot.net is presently an enterprise need and solution. Later I expect it to filter down the food chain.

The reason for the final product in dot.net was because these banks have decided to go dot.net and in particulare ASP.net for ease of installation and distribution and because they sell hosted solutions to other banks which are obviously accessed via the Internet.

Simon




>>Hi
>>
>>Recently I was hired to write a prototype CRM package for a Credit Union in the United States. They wanted me to prototype it in VFP because it could be done quickly and used to demonstrate the planned features of the ASP.Net version.
>>
>>The Credit Union is a Dot.net shop and has had experience with the length of time it takes to develop application in that environment. So to reduce the risk they had me develop the prototype in VFP. It included escalation capabilities, work flow management and host integration with Credit Union's service provider etc. The project took three weeks and two revisions before I had exactly what they wanted.
>>
>>Now it has been given to the ASP.net team to replicate in Dot.Net. The prototype gives the ASP.net team an interface and feature set that they need to duplicate reducing the time it will take them to create the application.
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>>That is the first time I got paid to write an application that will never be used in real life.
>>
>>Simon
>
>Some of my applications were never used in real life, but it wasn't planned <g>.
>
>Interesting concept, that prototyping. That raises some interesting questions, for example: why would the prototyping take much longer in .NET? What do they expect from .NET, in the final product, that they can't get in VFP?