TABLE OF CONTENTS Some of the other factors that should be considered during the project planning stage include the issues of support, maintenance, system functionality, and standardization.
Developing a data management system requires a commitment to ongoing support for the users as well as for the system itself.
Complex systems require a much higher level of programming support and maintenance. If trained, qualified support personnel are not going to be available to maintain the system in the future, it is far preferable to develop a simple, easy-to-maintain system than a complex solution.
In every case, adoption of recognized industry standards for data models, protocols, operating systems, and data format should be encouraged. This will help future maintenance, modifications, and data migration to be done more easily, and it is more likely that qualified personnel will be available than with proprietary, nonstandard approaches. For example, every company has a few experts who can develop useful in-house solutions that serve the immediate needs of the user community. However, the survival of the system depends entirely on (in many cases) one individual. If that person leaves the company (which will eventually happen), it may be impossible to continue providing support and maintenance for the system.
No matter how sophisticated the user interface, there will come a time when additional options, features, or enhancements will be needed. In most cases, it is preferable to have some sort of internal programming capabilities in the system to solve these specialized, ad hoc
