>>- a department, for whatever reason, does not enlist IT's help, and selects a software package for their department.
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>Probably because the IT department with their penchant for always wanting the latest software development tools or following the latest fad never develope system the users need.. It a system gets developed it is generally late and over budget. They generally do a good job with keeping the network and servers up, but a very poor job of developing systems for their users.
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>The user is then faced with the situation of buying a software package from a third party vendor or building the systems themselves if they want to survive in their job. In my case, I hired a VFP programmers and placed him on staff and built the systems without help from the IT staff. The IT staff had a great deal of concern because the systems were not under their control, however management allowed me to continue building my own system since IT could not produce. One of the meeting that I can recall is that they made a big issue about referencial intergrity and FoxPro. I never understood that arugment nor did they. I have since retired for that organization, but all the system are still up and running. You can argue that I was dealing with a lousy IT shop, but from my experinces with employees from other companies it appears to be quite common.
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>IMHO there is a place for VFP in every enterprise, but the IT shops are too worried about losing control of the data. They need to be more more concerned about providing systems that meet the user's needs using the best development tools in term of costs and speed of development. Vfp can provide that capability since it is data centric. Not all applications need to be an enterprise solution attached to the web for thousands to access.
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>I have been on both sides of the IT issue. As a user in several organizations and early in my career I had operational responsibilities for a IT shop of several hundred employees. My experience is that far too many IT shops have a myopic view of their role in an organization and thus find it hard to endorse VFP .
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>The PC got their impetus because the IBM mainframes systems could not provide the users the capablility they needed. The users voted with their feet and went out and bought that dreaded thing called a PC and either Visicalc or Multiplan and started creating their own data and the organiztion became much more proficient to the chagrin of the IT folks. If IBM had their way the only computer an organization would ever need would be a mainframe. I'm not too sure the IT environment today isn't in the same mind set today about system development.


Thanks Gaylen. I have had exactly the same experiences this side of the world and I couldnt agree more.