[AccessD] Frameworks and application development

I would just like to stress that a framework only handles repetitive
programming issues.  The majority of a project is usually spent in analysis
of business needs, design of a relational model to hold the data required to
meet the business needs, MIGRATION of existing data into a relational model
and so forth.  It's easy to get off into how much time some tool saves, but
those design pieces of the puzzle are still there to be done.  

I designed a call center application from an existing very basic and almost
completely non-normalized Access Application.  I spent almost 5 months
simultaneously designing the application data tables, building up a set of
queries to do the data migration, and building up the basic application that
would use the new normalized data.  Five months where the client used the
old software while we rebuilt that old application from scratch.

A huge amount of that time was spent building a push button system for
normalizing the old data into the new data structures.  When it worked, we
pushed the button and switched to the new system.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com