Does it work this way at every company?
At Sun, it appears to be a common occurrence that once you've written something you end up owning it forever. Even changing jobs won't get you out of supporting a tool you wrote 5+ years prior (yes, I've worked at Sun forever). I'm happy to say that I don't get called very often anymore about SunSolve, but I do know they're still running some of my code. What a scary thought. I wrote it originally intending to change over to something else when the technology improved. Apparently it's not changed enough or improved enough to change to a new technology.
Which brings up another point - when does it make sense to change? Customers - internal and external - are loathe to change. This goes double for customers trying to solve mission critical problems. SunSolve is a vast repository of information (and I mean vast). Power users know how it works, what the dataset is like and how to get the best results. If you change the interface or query engine on these guys you get kicked around the schoolyard for a while. Internal support folks have their little tricks as well. How do you introduce new technology to them? It's an age old question and really tough to solve.
Oh well, it's not really my problem any more - I have to just deal with the sun.com customers...
