Reminds me very much of what I refer to as the Microsoft Access problem. Somebody with no database design background hacks out an app in Access, which works. T

Reminds me very much of what I refer to as the Microsoft Access problem. Somebody with no database design background hacks out an app in Access, which works. Ten years later, the dude has long sinced left the company, you have a horrid, non-resilient and unmaintainable application, which nobody understands, but is utterly critical to the business. It can get even worse, when Access applications connect to the enterprise database. I've seen pure horrors with such scenarios, ranging from queries that bog down the entire system up to ghost locks, which wouldn't go away without recycling the data server. The problems are somewhat different, but the root cause is the same: Trying to scale something, which is clearly designed for the desktop, to enterprise level.