RE: Who owns the database - client or software vendor?

I'd say that the customer owns the data, period.  The database structure
is mine. 

That said, I also have no problems with a customer using any type of
tool to *look* at the data, be it sql, dfu, qry, etc.

I do have problems with customers who just want to directly update the
data in the files.  This is usualy a problem because they do not know
all of the dependencies within the file structures and the data
dependencies themselves.

When a customer changes the data directly & incorrectly (missing parts),
it always seems to pop up as a problem around month-end.  And then it's
my problem.  And only sometimes will we be told that "oh yeah, we
changed that record so the finance charge wasn't added", even when the
rest of the system thought that it was.

This is all from a software vendor's point of view.



Bill Brosch
Swift Technologies

e-mail: bbrosch@stecnet.com
web site:       http://www.stecnet.com
phone:  1-847-289-8339
fax:            1-847-289-8939

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Williams [mailto:colin.williams@technocrats.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 09:44 AM
To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject: Who owns the database - client or software vendor?


If a software vendor supplies a system to a client, who owns the
database, the client or the vendor?

And if the client has rights to the data, does he not also have rights
to acces that data using tools that are independent of the vendor?

Does this also mean he has rights to the layout of those files in the
database, so that he can actually use the tools on the data?

Without the layout, the database is nothing right?
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