2012 Class Development Survey – Last Day to Get in
When you complete our survey it helps us determine the content areas that are most important to you, as we will develop classes for our Expo next year.
In exchange for your time, we are offering 25 free class registrations and/or DVDs at random to those who complete the survey and provide their contact information.
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Legacy Tools
Legacy tools consist of hardware and/or software for which the manufacturer no longer exists, or refuses to support at any cost. The problem is that we sometimes have tools that are perfectly functional, completely fulfill our business needs, and the only problem with them is that if the break, they have to be replaced.
I experienced this scenario at a couple of companies. One company had a firewall running on a PC that was 10 years old. The hardware died one day, the computer crashed. We had zero internet access for the entire company; Email was down, etc.
Another company, in 2000, had a 15 year old Data General performing core business functions using custom software. It worked great. The company had a great deal of concern because support for the hardware was hard to find, and parts were impossible to get.
How often do we laugh at the proverbial boat anchor…when they are all around us. This topic came to my thoughts as I was reading responses regarding Version Does Matter. What do you do when there is no direct upgrade path for your software? Or better yet, how do you make software architecture decisions reducing the risk of no upgrade path?
Please drop me a note with your comments by sending an Email to btaylor@sswug.org. Maybe you might even like to talk about legacy skills instead.
Cheers,
Ben
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Reader Comments
Version Does Matter
Marty writes:
Not only am I seeing the issue of multiple database platforms (in SQL Server AND Oracle in my case), but I am also seeing issues with old applications and software, and interfacing issues to later versions of SQL Server and/or Oracle. These issues include things like Access applications using an older version of Access, but needing to interface to a newer version of SQL Server (eg., linked tables function). Also, I run into a lot of ODBC interface issues now with the advent of multiple database versions AND o/s changes (ie., 32 bit to 64 bit).
The latter issue is for both Oracle AND SQL Server. It has made me somewhat more ‘valuable’ being the only old-timer (over 36 years in the business) who can ‘flange’ or paste-together the various software involved. Valuable in that they need to keep such people around as new
Access as a Prototype Tool
Michael Writes:
I know of a particular [company] (not named to protect the innocent) that has tons of Access applications that start out as a prototype, or as they call it, “proof of concept”. Years later these Access apps are still in use because IT lacks the manpower to implement them in a robust environment. Yet, they spend hundreds of person hours to support these Access apps.
I guess that’s the problem with Access; it does some things too well so that companies are willing to pay a pretty big price in Technical Debt, rather than build an enterprise class product.