I'm originally a North Dakotan who became a huge fan of Axis & Allies in the 80s. I have a background in software design and development. As an employee for a small company, I've developed loan software for banks which sits upon a relational database (MS Access, in fact). One of my proudest accomplishments is that I designed and created a forms-logic expert system engine which allowed all the forms logic to be user-defined (nothing in code, other than the engine itself). This enabled my company (mostly me as an employee) to define rules whereby various loan information was mined from the database to determine which forms were required and optional for a given loan (a few of the many parameters were loan type, principals involved, types of collateral, state of origination, bank preferences, etc...) It could even report why a given form was (or was not) selected. It was all quite nifty and neat if I do say so myself. The data-driven approach draws me to MapView--an engine which allows itself to be driven by data (UDMs). I share my background not to try to imply that my ideas will be any better or more correct than others, but rather to show my appreciation for the general approach used by the creator of MapView. I hope to be involved with MapView using what may be a small understanding of what might lie underneath--in the MapView engine. I'd love to know more about the underpinnings of MapView. I'd even love an opportunity to look at Mot's source code and other helpful design information (though I don't imagine Mot will want to go open-source with this baby, and I'm not asking him to do so).

been a software developer

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