The Mistake

  • Michael Valentine Jones (1/30/2008)


    Microsoft is pretty quick to drop support on prior versions.

    Not every vendor does that:

    http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/openvms_supportchart.html

    OpenVMS VAX version 5.5-2 released in Nov 1991

    Ending date for Prior Version Support-Sustaining Engineering:

    At least through 2012, with 24 month notice thereafter

    I have to tell my wife about that -- they have a Dec Alpha box at the observatory that I'm pretty sure is running VMS, I think it's running Lisp controlling the telescope motors.

    :w00t:

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • Holly Kilpatrick (1/30/2008)


    Yes, at that link it does give the 4/8/08 date for the various editions, but for SQL 2000 SP4 it does not, it says until next service pack or the end of the product's lifecycle, and under support lifecycle they say "Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer." So it seems like that would mean 5 years from 5/26/05, the general availability date given for SQL 2000 SP4. ?? Everyone tells me, no, it is moving to extended support 4/8/08, so I must be missing something.

    Holly

    The way that page is worded isn't helping at all. My understanding of those lines was that they were specific to support on issues directly related to or deriving from applying that particular support pack, and NOT to any and all issues relevant to an installation of SQL server having been patched successfully to that level. Meaning - "mainstream support of SP4" and not "mainstream support of SQL2000 patched to SP4".

    I do hope however that they just haven't managed to update all of these kinds of documents after the delay was announced (so ultimately you'd be right about the mainstream support dropping off somewhat later).

    It would be nice if the wording were clearer, but it is what it is.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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?

  • Wayne West (1/30/2008)


    Michael Valentine Jones (1/30/2008)


    Microsoft is pretty quick to drop support on prior versions.

    Not every vendor does that:

    http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/openvms_supportchart.html

    OpenVMS VAX version 5.5-2 released in Nov 1991

    Ending date for Prior Version Support-Sustaining Engineering:

    At least through 2012, with 24 month notice thereafter

    I have to tell my wife about that -- they have a Dec Alpha box at the observatory that I'm pretty sure is running VMS, I think it's running Lisp controlling the telescope motors.

    :w00t:

    I think VMS users have a different set of expectations about how long their systems will be in service.

    It’s not unusual to hear about systems that haven't been rebooted in 4 years, and I remember hearing about one that hadn’t been rebooted for 8 years.

    I managed a system that we didn’t reboot for about 3 years, and was only rebooted because we had to physically move it. It was installed in 1994, and is still in service.

  • William (1/29/2008)

    ...that is not justification for allowing anyone to arbitrarily set a delivery date. The Marketing and the Sales people as well as a 4 year old are not qualified to do this because they (normally) are not developers and therefore have no knowledge in this field.

    I think the real problem is that the marketing department is determining BOTH the features and the deadline.

    The fault is ours for putting up with this absurdity.

    As a group we need to not talk about features that MSFT says will be in products until after they are released and tested by the community. But, that doesn't happen because everyone wants to be the first to describe something and we (like little lemmings) rush to that website and read it as though it was going to (1) be in the product, and (2) work as the glossy literature indicates.

    William (1/29/2008)

    If you were going in to your local hospital for a heart transplant would you be OK with the administrators arbitrarily setting the date for your surgery?

    Poor choice of analogy, in fact that's exactly what happens (though indirectly).

    The administrators control the number of operating rooms that you can do a heart surgery in, the number of staff who can do that operation (surgeons, anasthesiologists, etc.), when those people work, and how many OR's are dedicated to EMS (because trauma cases trump scheduled operations)

    You have the illusion that the doctor has control because that's who you schedule with, but the doctor only decides which of his/her patients goes first.

    (I worked in a hospital's dept of Surgery for 18 months as a programmer)

    [highlight]I know what you meant[/highlight]... my point is that putting 'marketing' in charge of BOTH the features AND the release date SHOULD be a recipe for disaster... but isn't because (1) we are so accustomed to it that it doesn't affect our buying decisions and (2) who here wants to use Oracle? (I have 10i at home, it is a good db, but not one I want to use)

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