>
> My suggestion is that you consider the needs of the application more
> than the ease of transition for the programmers. Learning something
> about relational database design and use will be of value to them,
> and will make your application better.
>

You are absolutely correct. This is the way I should be looking at it. BUT!

In my case I am dealing with a group of Cobol programmers, the least experienced of which has been writing programs the same way for over 30 years. Whenever I suggest that there might be a different way of accomplishing the desired result I get (check all that apply):

( ) That isn't the way we've always done it
( ) That's stupid
( ) That's too much work
( ) Only an idiot would do it that way
( ) Why can't we just treat it like an ISAM file?
( ) We have several thousand programs to migrate and we can't afford to be making significant logic changes to all of them.

You get the general idea. If we are going to make any forward progress with this we have to be able to put it into terms that the existing programmers are willing to work with. Otherwise, they will simply dig in their heals and nothing will get done. Doesn't really matter if it is the "right" way to do it.