  Often, perhaps not often enough, we choose Common Off the Shelf (COTS)
software for integration in our systems. These range from repositories to
databases and tools we use on a daily basis. It is very hard to assess the
effectiveness of these choices. While none of us would consider a project
specific word processing solution when LaTeX (or even Word) many will consider
writing their own data management systems. We will look at some of the COTS we
have used and attempt to explain how we came to the decision and if it was
worth it.
