Tim --

Your IT operation's approach is about 180 degrees away from ours. We buy and support, rather than develop in-house, whenever possible. We find that to be more economic. We program as little as possible, and then mostly to tie systems together, link commercial app to Intranet (e.g., employee pay advice and benefits support) or Internet (e.g., election results, GIS mapping, Register of Deeds filings), or the like. Our IT folks are more project managers and integrators, rather than programmers. Why reinvent the wheel, if you can buy something proven, supported and flexible? True, one must always make compromises, and sometimes revise operations to fit the commercial app's parameters, but too often custom systems get debugged just about in time to be replaced or suffer when the in-house expert leaves.

We are just moving from Zasio Versatile Express to Versatile Professional (both accessing a MS SQL database on a network server). I have the add-in app to import data in Excel and other formats, though I have not had time to learn it and use it, yet. I make extensive use of exporting data to Excel, to provide to customer departments and for internal purposes. Exporting to Excel gives me the interactivity I want to analyze.

Call me or email me direct, if you want to discuss in more detail.

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|| Douglas K. King, Records Manager / Freedom of Information Officer
|| Sedgwick County DIO-Records Management Services
|| Sedgwick County Courthouse / 525 N. Main /  Wichita KS 67203
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