[ericax]

Totally agree (except for the first sentence LOL!).

Come to think of it, IDEs are exactly that: a powerful front-end for your code files. That means us programmers are not locked into any one IDE.

> And to take it to the next level we should create more general purpose (and standardized) database tools that are user friendly

Yep, but I wonder how we can get there. Hope someone figures it out! It's always hard to set standards.

[mbreese]

I too see no problem in a closed-source application so long as the data files are open. I like the IDE analogy here -- you can edit source code with a bunch of different tools. Some open, some closed. But the important thing is that the source code is readable by all of them.