February 19, 2008 at 9:25 am
Jeff Moden (2/19/2008)
Here I am, trying to practice some of those fancy-dancy soft skills that my company has been trying to drill into my head, and you just come right out and say exactly what I wanted to say in the first place 😀I absolutely agree and it's a bloody shame we're not actually working on the same team, Matt.
You an ex submarine sailor by any chance? 😉
I know - they keep beating me over the head with "don't piss the vendors off" - it just take a while to sink through 5 inches of solid bone I guess.....:D
And no - wrong service. I was an Army reservist for a very short while (in an SMP capacity during college). I never got the privilege of serving in anything other than a trainee capacity ( I was heading the ROTC track, but they got tired of waiting for me to finish my degree - so we parted ways).
As to working on the same team - never say never. Who should know? After all I thought I heard something about your outfit moving my way. You do know there's beer in NC, right? 😎
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
February 19, 2008 at 9:54 am
With some great mixed feelings, I won't be joining my outfit in NC... the love of my life for the last 22 years has followed me a couple of times... she now has here "dream" job and I'm staying in Michigan so she can keep it.
Anyone out there in the Pontiac area need someone who knows a little something about SQL Server? 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 19, 2008 at 10:19 am
Ask them for a list of satisfied customers that you can contact to see if they are satisfied with the performance, support and scalability of the product. I've yet to find a company that will happily supply that list, but then I've yet to see a perfect product!!
February 19, 2008 at 10:45 am
Jeff Moden (2/19/2008)
With some great mixed feelings, I won't be joining my outfit in NC... the love of my life for the last 22 years has followed me a couple of times... she now has here "dream" job and I'm staying in Michigan so she can keep it.
That's actually a very good reason. Sorry it doesn't work out in your favor.
Now - say this with me:
You go to work honey - I can be "kept"....:D
On second thought - no, don't say that....You're likely to get hurt! :w00t::hehe::cool:
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
February 19, 2008 at 11:02 am
Heh... not quite that "whipped"... I've been offered the chance to do a remote thing... just not sure I want to... they pretty much put the screws to about 350 people who can't sell their house without taking a huge loss... not a real good business decision on their part... not sure I want to be associated anymore.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 20, 2008 at 4:45 am
I always ask :-
1) Whether there are any restrictions on our interfaces writing to their database & what the caveats are.
2) Can we create views/procedures in their DB if needs be, one of our bought in applications runs a 'integrity' check on the DB that looks for foreign code and fires off all sorts of warnings.
Happy shopping
Harv
February 20, 2008 at 8:43 am
Ask them for the support documentation and service level they provide for support. If no documentation, what kind of product will be?
Do you have your own database/server/application policy, standard and auditor requirements? Use them to filter the vendor’s application.
Does the vendor application binaries need to be running on database server? Is it allowed in your environment?
February 20, 2008 at 9:44 am
My first question is whether Enterprise edition is really needed. There is a large price difference between it and Standard. Unless you just have a pile of spare Enterprise licenses or really need the Enterprise advanced features then it isn't good for your project's cost/benefit analysis to use more expensive software than is needed.
February 20, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I don't think anyone has brought up many of the questions that are driven by non-dedicated instances:
Do you require any server-level role rights and why if yes?
Do you support databases hosted on shared (non-dedicated) SQL instances?
How many concurrent users do you expect?
Read-intensive/write intensive?
Additionally, we have plenty of disk space in our environment so I tend to size all our databases out to their projected 3-year growth to avoid external fragmentation. Therefore I ask for initial and annual projected growth size.
We also run into vendors who want to be able to have direct access to the SQL server via remote access. Definitely ask the vendor what level of access they expect to have to their databases for support purposes. Then tell them what they are going to be allowed to have in terms of rights. Get that battle won before the check is signed.
- Tim Ford, SQL Server MVPhttp://www.sqlcruise.comhttp://www.thesqlagentman.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyford
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