Production Vs Development

Hi,
I've just come into a new organisation and my unit's role is mostly
reporting on mostly OLAP type data (although our "warehouse" is pretty much
useless, and so we work off periodic snapshots of the OLTP data, which seems
to be tolerable performance-wise).
I'm having a bit of trouble coming to grips with their idea of
"Development", "Test", and "Production" environments.
First off, there is no such thing as "test", just dev and prod.
Next, the IT Department that manages the what they call "production" is
unrelated to my business unit. They are apparently very unresponsive and can
routinely take six months to effect any requested change to the "production"
reporting database objects. We have read-only access to the production
server/database.
To work around this, my unit has lapsed into the habit of running their
reports off the dev server (which they have control over). When I've pointed
out to them respectfully, that they appear to be doing production work on a
dev server, I come up against a brick wall.
"No." They say. "If we're not reporting off the production server, it's not
production reporting." But then they go on to publish these reports as
representative of the state of the business.
Now I would have though that any environment you use to produce outputs that
you regard as being a part of your business are defacto "production", but I'm
getting no traction with such a novel concept here.
It strikes me though, that Microsoft, given the price differential between
their development and production licensing would have a fairly water-tight
differentiation between dev and prod. What is MS's idea of the difference,
and where can I find a version of it that is written in words that grade
threes could cope with?
Cheers
GPOWhat you have is a problem in the leadership (or rather lack of it) of your
organization. If you want the kind of change you've described, a document
from Microsoft isn't going to change anything.
If you can get a server, load an Express version on it and declare it a
production instance. Then move the reporting to it as you can. Lead by
example.
"GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2FC64B51-5540-4FF0-81DF-7E690ACD3645@.microsoft.com...
> Hi,
> I've just come into a new organisation and my unit's role is mostly
> reporting on mostly OLAP type data (although our "warehouse" is pretty
> much
> useless, and so we work off periodic snapshots of the OLTP data, which
> seems
> to be tolerable performance-wise).
> I'm having a bit of trouble coming to grips with their idea of
> "Development", "Test", and "Production" environments.
> First off, there is no such thing as "test", just dev and prod.
> Next, the IT Department that manages the what they call "production" is
> unrelated to my business unit. They are apparently very unresponsive and
> can
> routinely take six months to effect any requested change to the
> "production"
> reporting database objects. We have read-only access to the production
> server/database.
> To work around this, my unit has lapsed into the habit of running their
> reports off the dev server (which they have control over). When I've
> pointed
> out to them respectfully, that they appear to be doing production work on
> a
> dev server, I come up against a brick wall.
> "No." They say. "If we're not reporting off the production server, it's
> not
> production reporting." But then they go on to publish these reports as
> representative of the state of the business.
> Now I would have though that any environment you use to produce outputs
> that
> you regard as being a part of your business are defacto "production", but
> I'm
> getting no traction with such a novel concept here.
> It strikes me though, that Microsoft, given the price differential between
> their development and production licensing would have a fairly water-tight
> differentiation between dev and prod. What is MS's idea of the difference,
> and where can I find a version of it that is written in words that grade
> threes could cope with?
> Cheers
> GPO
>|||I cling to the hope that some basic guidelines from MS will help. I don't
think management is dishonest; merely incompetent. Question is "Where can I
find such guidelines - and written in a way that even my management could
understand?"
The other thing is that SQL Express might not be appropriate anyway. I
thought Express was not intended for an enterprise sized operation, and the
4GB limit would kill us if nothing else.
Regards
GPO
"Jay" wrote:
> What you have is a problem in the leadership (or rather lack of it) of your
> organization. If you want the kind of change you've described, a document
> from Microsoft isn't going to change anything.
> If you can get a server, load an Express version on it and declare it a
> production instance. Then move the reporting to it as you can. Lead by
> example.
> "GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:2FC64B51-5540-4FF0-81DF-7E690ACD3645@.microsoft.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've just come into a new organisation and my unit's role is mostly
> > reporting on mostly OLAP type data (although our "warehouse" is pretty
> > much
> > useless, and so we work off periodic snapshots of the OLTP data, which
> > seems
> > to be tolerable performance-wise).
> >
> > I'm having a bit of trouble coming to grips with their idea of
> > "Development", "Test", and "Production" environments.
> >
> > First off, there is no such thing as "test", just dev and prod.
> > Next, the IT Department that manages the what they call "production" is
> > unrelated to my business unit. They are apparently very unresponsive and
> > can
> > routinely take six months to effect any requested change to the
> > "production"
> > reporting database objects. We have read-only access to the production
> > server/database.
> >
> > To work around this, my unit has lapsed into the habit of running their
> > reports off the dev server (which they have control over). When I've
> > pointed
> > out to them respectfully, that they appear to be doing production work on
> > a
> > dev server, I come up against a brick wall.
> >
> > "No." They say. "If we're not reporting off the production server, it's
> > not
> > production reporting." But then they go on to publish these reports as
> > representative of the state of the business.
> >
> > Now I would have though that any environment you use to produce outputs
> > that
> > you regard as being a part of your business are defacto "production", but
> > I'm
> > getting no traction with such a novel concept here.
> >
> > It strikes me though, that Microsoft, given the price differential between
> > their development and production licensing would have a fairly water-tight
> > differentiation between dev and prod. What is MS's idea of the difference,
> > and where can I find a version of it that is written in words that grade
> > threes could cope with?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > GPO
> >
>
>|||MS might do a lot of things but one thing they don't do is dictate the
opeartional policies of your company.
That is a role of the Senior Management team of your company.
You talk about 'my unit'. Are you the Manager of 'my unit'? If you are then
simply issue a written instruction to all members of 'my unit' setting out
how things shall work and require that they acknowledge, in writing, that
they have read and understood the instruction. After that, if anyone
disregards the instruction then it becomes a disciplinary matter.
Is the Senior Management of the company aware of the 'unreponsive'ness of
the production IT team? If not then make them aware of it. If I were on the
Senior Management team and that sort of information came to my attention I
would be doing some very serious backside kicking.
"GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7A2C1D04-3FEA-4A06-9C9F-70FEC67659F9@.microsoft.com...
>I cling to the hope that some basic guidelines from MS will help. I don't
> think management is dishonest; merely incompetent. Question is "Where can
> I
> find such guidelines - and written in a way that even my management could
> understand?"
> The other thing is that SQL Express might not be appropriate anyway. I
> thought Express was not intended for an enterprise sized operation, and
> the
> 4GB limit would kill us if nothing else.
> Regards
> GPO
> "Jay" wrote:
>> What you have is a problem in the leadership (or rather lack of it) of
>> your
>> organization. If you want the kind of change you've described, a document
>> from Microsoft isn't going to change anything.
>> If you can get a server, load an Express version on it and declare it a
>> production instance. Then move the reporting to it as you can. Lead by
>> example.
>> "GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:2FC64B51-5540-4FF0-81DF-7E690ACD3645@.microsoft.com...
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I've just come into a new organisation and my unit's role is mostly
>> > reporting on mostly OLAP type data (although our "warehouse" is pretty
>> > much
>> > useless, and so we work off periodic snapshots of the OLTP data, which
>> > seems
>> > to be tolerable performance-wise).
>> >
>> > I'm having a bit of trouble coming to grips with their idea of
>> > "Development", "Test", and "Production" environments.
>> >
>> > First off, there is no such thing as "test", just dev and prod.
>> > Next, the IT Department that manages the what they call "production" is
>> > unrelated to my business unit. They are apparently very unresponsive
>> > and
>> > can
>> > routinely take six months to effect any requested change to the
>> > "production"
>> > reporting database objects. We have read-only access to the production
>> > server/database.
>> >
>> > To work around this, my unit has lapsed into the habit of running their
>> > reports off the dev server (which they have control over). When I've
>> > pointed
>> > out to them respectfully, that they appear to be doing production work
>> > on
>> > a
>> > dev server, I come up against a brick wall.
>> >
>> > "No." They say. "If we're not reporting off the production server, it's
>> > not
>> > production reporting." But then they go on to publish these reports as
>> > representative of the state of the business.
>> >
>> > Now I would have though that any environment you use to produce outputs
>> > that
>> > you regard as being a part of your business are defacto "production",
>> > but
>> > I'm
>> > getting no traction with such a novel concept here.
>> >
>> > It strikes me though, that Microsoft, given the price differential
>> > between
>> > their development and production licensing would have a fairly
>> > water-tight
>> > differentiation between dev and prod. What is MS's idea of the
>> > difference,
>> > and where can I find a version of it that is written in words that
>> > grade
>> > threes could cope with?
>> >
>> > Cheers
>> >
>> > GPO
>> >
>>|||"...MS might do a lot of things but one thing they don't do is dictate the
opeartional policies of your company..."
Yes but surely they'd take an interest in whether people were purchasing
developer software (cheap cheap cheap) and then using it in a production
capacity. My question is how do they make this judgement?
Sadly it's not "my unit" in the sense that I manage it. I don't. I say "my
unit" because it's the unit I work for.
"...Is the Senior Management of the company aware of the 'unreponsive'ness
..." Well it's a large government department. Unresponsiveness is culturally
ingrained.
"Stephany Young" wrote:
> MS might do a lot of things but one thing they don't do is dictate the
> opeartional policies of your company.
> That is a role of the Senior Management team of your company.
> You talk about 'my unit'. Are you the Manager of 'my unit'? If you are then
> simply issue a written instruction to all members of 'my unit' setting out
> how things shall work and require that they acknowledge, in writing, that
> they have read and understood the instruction. After that, if anyone
> disregards the instruction then it becomes a disciplinary matter.
> Is the Senior Management of the company aware of the 'unreponsive'ness of
> the production IT team? If not then make them aware of it. If I were on the
> Senior Management team and that sort of information came to my attention I
> would be doing some very serious backside kicking.
>
> "GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:7A2C1D04-3FEA-4A06-9C9F-70FEC67659F9@.microsoft.com...
> >I cling to the hope that some basic guidelines from MS will help. I don't
> > think management is dishonest; merely incompetent. Question is "Where can
> > I
> > find such guidelines - and written in a way that even my management could
> > understand?"
> >
> > The other thing is that SQL Express might not be appropriate anyway. I
> > thought Express was not intended for an enterprise sized operation, and
> > the
> > 4GB limit would kill us if nothing else.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > GPO
> >
> > "Jay" wrote:
> >
> >> What you have is a problem in the leadership (or rather lack of it) of
> >> your
> >> organization. If you want the kind of change you've described, a document
> >> from Microsoft isn't going to change anything.
> >>
> >> If you can get a server, load an Express version on it and declare it a
> >> production instance. Then move the reporting to it as you can. Lead by
> >> example.
> >>
> >> "GPO" <GPO@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:2FC64B51-5540-4FF0-81DF-7E690ACD3645@.microsoft.com...
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > I've just come into a new organisation and my unit's role is mostly
> >> > reporting on mostly OLAP type data (although our "warehouse" is pretty
> >> > much
> >> > useless, and so we work off periodic snapshots of the OLTP data, which
> >> > seems
> >> > to be tolerable performance-wise).
> >> >
> >> > I'm having a bit of trouble coming to grips with their idea of
> >> > "Development", "Test", and "Production" environments.
> >> >
> >> > First off, there is no such thing as "test", just dev and prod.
> >> > Next, the IT Department that manages the what they call "production" is
> >> > unrelated to my business unit. They are apparently very unresponsive
> >> > and
> >> > can
> >> > routinely take six months to effect any requested change to the
> >> > "production"
> >> > reporting database objects. We have read-only access to the production
> >> > server/database.
> >> >
> >> > To work around this, my unit has lapsed into the habit of running their
> >> > reports off the dev server (which they have control over). When I've
> >> > pointed
> >> > out to them respectfully, that they appear to be doing production work
> >> > on
> >> > a
> >> > dev server, I come up against a brick wall.
> >> >
> >> > "No." They say. "If we're not reporting off the production server, it's
> >> > not
> >> > production reporting." But then they go on to publish these reports as
> >> > representative of the state of the business.
> >> >
> >> > Now I would have though that any environment you use to produce outputs
> >> > that
> >> > you regard as being a part of your business are defacto "production",
> >> > but
> >> > I'm
> >> > getting no traction with such a novel concept here.
> >> >
> >> > It strikes me though, that Microsoft, given the price differential
> >> > between
> >> > their development and production licensing would have a fairly
> >> > water-tight
> >> > differentiation between dev and prod. What is MS's idea of the
> >> > difference,
> >> > and where can I find a version of it that is written in words that
> >> > grade
> >> > threes could cope with?
> >> >
> >> > Cheers
> >> >
> >> > GPO
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
>