Newbie to forum and I'd appreciate some advice! IT Manager for SME.
We have a series of tables in Foxpro5 accessed via 'exes'. Its now getting very tired! My MD has brought in a consultant (personal friend!!) who is advising we create 'data layers', based on a model he used previously called Cadence, Brevity, Avidity (anyone heard of it?). He tells me that the raw data resides in the Cadence level and cannot be accessed or altered without the highest of rights. The users generally work on localised versions at the Brevity level, where they can write/edit data. Once this data is verified it gets written to the Cadence level. All reports are run from the Avidity level which is essentially view only. To me this seems a very outdated methodology and I am not comfortable with having multiple localised versions of data - recipe for disaster in my experience! It may be that I am missunderstanding what he is suggesting but I can't shake the feeling that this is not quite right! Anyone got any insights on A-B-C or similar systems?

Never heard of it. Google returned nothing. It must be his own personal design model.
He sounds a bit like a man with a hammer...every problem is a nail.

Hmmm I tried Google too, the more I look at it, the more I think he means soe variation on n-tier but doesn't really understand the model himself - and that really scares me!