Re: Is my MySQL Gaining ?

Quoting Tony <tony(at)unihost(dot)net>:

> Sadly a company will believe anything that a consultant they trust tells
> them. Otherwise there'd be little point in hiring a consultant to give
> them advice would there?

There are different levels of trust and in addition sometimes consultants are
used for feasibility studies- "how would you do this?" If you're telling me
you've never been in a situation where a client called you in because they want
to implement a project with certain products or other specification because they
have "done the research and want to proceed this way" then I'm very glad to hear
that. No matter how much you are trusted as a consultant or technical advisor
you are still just a guide. That means it is possible for your client is "wander
off the path". I remember in the not so long ago days when people wanted to run
certain hardware or software because to not do so would give the perception that
you were not up to par. Sometimes what is used has nothing to do with using the
best product for the job. That seems to be a sub-text of this thread.

> It seems rather illogical that you'd refuse to work with a company that
> had been given potentially sub-standard advice, based on what appears to
> be a theological view?

I'm sure the MySQL folks don't think they are sub-standard. A fair amount of my
business is "clean up" so if someone said, "we have an app on MySQL that is not
working for us" I would most definitely be interested. If someone said to me
what DB do I use to build applications, I would say PG. If then someone says to
me that "well we're a MySQL shop" then I would have to hear more because
depending on what they want to do, I might not take on that project. There is
nothing illogical or theological in that.

> Either that or you have more consulting work than you know what to do
> with, that you can afford to base business decisions on an ideological
> basis.

This really doesn't make sense. Are you telling me you are going to accept any
an all work regardless of competency and confidence in that product? Would you
really build a financial application on MySQL? We both know that we all have a
certain ideology (read: religion) when it comes to our trade. To be clear, I'm
not saying anything against someone who would use MySQL for a financial app.
I'm just saying that I would not (or at least try very hard not to) involve
myself in that project or any other project where I thought there was a bad
design or implementation.

When you are a smaller operation your reputation is going to weigh in a lot more
than a larger company. I do not want my name to be tied to something
sub-standard. If a consultant values his or her reputation I don't see how you
can NOT consider what products you are willing to put your name on the line for.

> If I chose not to work with companies that used Windows as servers
> (because IMHO, Windows is not a good server environment) my house
> would've been repossessed, and I'd have probably starved by now.
>
> T.

12 years ago calling myself a consultant one day meant putting in a netware 3.11
server for a bunch of PCs and MACs and pulling coax. Did I want to do that- I
can't really say because at the time I had to eat. That for me is on the outer
fringes of this thread. Few organzations are NOT using Windows somewhere, and
an increasing number of organizations are starting understand OSS solutions. So
both world are merging so it not about avoiding and one thing. Its about
picking an choosing your battles.

>
> Keith C. Perry wrote:
>
> > The way I look at it is that I probably don't want to deal with a
> >company that thinks that MySQL on windows is "good environment".
> >
> >
> >
>

--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc.
http://vcsn.com

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