May 14th, 2008When to and when NOT to !
Life is full of tools, tips, tricks and technology. However most people fail on the “When to” and “When NOT to” use a particular piece of technology.
For example you would not use a pair of scissors to cut the lawn, or a lawn mower for a hair cut , yet they are both cutting / triming devices !
So why it is we see some people use a full on SQL database to manage the population of a TEN item drop down box and other use MSAccess (and the MSACCESS GUI not a web app) to run a million pound revneue generating mission critical business application for 100 users over 20 sites
May 17th, 2008 at 12:24
My particular favourite was a group which managed their multi-million pound revenue on an Access database; on a shared drive; which wasn’t backed up.
They had a failure; asked IT support to restore from backup. IT support said “We don’t back up that scratch drive.”
“Luckily” someone had a few weeks old copy they’d been playing with. Several weeks of overtime managed to recreate more-or-less what their data had looked like.
Why hadn’t they done it better? They “couldn’t afford to”. I asked if they though that 3 weeks of overtime for 15 people, and the risk their base copy was inaccurate was more affordable; they didn’t seem to think that was helpful.