Dog Fooding
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I'm sure you've heard the phrase before, "eat your own dog food" when referring to the practice of actually using the products that you sell in your business. At Peoplesoft they tried to get us to "drink our own champagne", but most of IT didn't change their phrasing :).
Years ago, if you worked at one of the auto companies, you drove one of their cars. In other words, driving up to the Chrysler building for an interview in your Toyota was a bad idea. If you worked at Coke, you didn't drink Pepsi.
The best one I heard was from a friend that used to work at Anheuser-Busch. He and his boss were looking to hire someone as they were very busy. They started the interview at 11:00 and they really liked the candidate. So much so, that when 12:00 came, they decided to continue to interview at lunch and invited the young man out to lunch at a local restaurant in St. Louis. They sit down and since they work at Anheuser-Busch, my friend and his boss each ordered a beer. The young man thought this was really great (my friend could see it in his eyes) and ordered one as well.
A Miller Lite.
Interview over, young man told he wouldn't get the job.
In the software world it used to amaze me that many companies don't use their own software internally. Sun ran many of their internal systems on a mainframe as did Microsoft. When they finally converted to their own software it wasn't a big press release, but the news got out. I kept thinking, how can you sell this product and tell me how great it is, how can you not use it yourself?
Times have changed and now most software companies use their own products. Including Microsoft, who is using their own software internally, specifically SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. One of their SAP systems has been running on SQL Server 2005 since last August!
Now we're not sure to what extent it's "running". For all I know the server gets rebooted everyday and the users just have to deal with it as the bugs in the product are worked out. It's nice for SAP and SQL Server customers because both companys have a huge interest in fixing bugs quickly and getting a very stable product and since they are converted early on, some real life testing is being done long before the product will be released. In this case, I'm guessing it will be over a year since my bet for RTM is November.
Of course, it does bring to mind two things. Being the cynic I am, is this system the one of record? In other words, while it might be the SAP system that has all the accounting and financials of Microsoft, is there a parallel system running on SQL Server 2000 that they actually use and this one tries to mimic the main one for testing purposes? It's worded carefully in the interview, but I'm always wary of someone placing that kind of bet.
The second thing I think about is "why isn't Microsoft running on Great Plains?"
Come to PASS and ask the Microsoft reps!!!! Use the "SSC" source code when registering and come to the SQLServerCentral.com casino party!
Steve Jones
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Years ago I worked at Ashton-Tate when they were in the process of developing dBASE IV. Their internal
bug-tracking program, which one might think would be written in dBASE III, was actually written
in Clipper - a dBASE III clone. Turns out that the programmers that developed the bug-tracking program
program preferred Clipper to dBASE because it had more built-in functionality and actually out-performed it!
C. Babb
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