PC said:
Mike,
$4000 ????? Cheap by any standard????
My fee would have been substantially less than that no matter what the
database was required to do!!!
Would it be fair to say that if a prospective client asked you to build a
database to do something that Access is patently unsuited for or impossible
to do that you would attempt to dissuade them and, ultimately, turn down that
piece of work if they were to persist?
As an example, say a punter wanted you to build a database that would contain
various statistics about racehorses, jockeys, conditions, etc etc so that he
could predict the winner of any given year's Kentucky Derby (including future
ones). Sure, you could build him a database containing that stuff with some
statistical matching and calculations and all, but would you be willing to
guarantee that it will do what he wants ie. predict the winner of the Derby?
If the prospective client were to insist that this was the key requirement of
database, I can't see any developer taking on that piece of work. Especially
if he was waving around a contract that included financial penalties every
time the database didn't predict the winner. I can see maybe a developer
taking it on as a special interest project that he or she does in her spare
time, just to see if it works, but I would think that anybody staking their
livelihood on it is heading for a fall.
That example applies irrespective of the tool involved. What if, for example,
the person wanted to build a music list or library that he could digitise his
entire collection of songs and build his own playlist? Sure, you could do
something like that in Access, but frankly I think the prospective client
would be better off getting an iPod and signing up to iTunes, and that a
developer who fails to explain those options to a prospective client is being
either naive or unethical.
I suppose those are the concerns that the sort of claim you make there raise.
I guess many people on these forums would appreciate it if you could modify
the size of your claims a bit - as has already been said, it seems like a bit
of hyperbole, and your refusal to acknowledge it as such makes you seem more
like a salesman than a developer