Re: Informix Directions

Michael "I don't like spam!" Segel wrote: +> David Kosenko wrote: +> > Once exception was where the developers were +> > allowed to dick +> > around for months with meaningless benchmarks. The vendor with the +> > most patience +> > won those. +> > + +Gee so are you saying that taking the time to do a technical analysis is +"dicking around"?Glad you're not my sales rep. Taking the time to do a technical analysis is one thing. I'm not talking about those (which as often as not resulted in upper management ignoring the results and going with the vendor whose sales rep was their buddy). I'm talking about those "benchmarks" where you waste most of your time explaining to the "techies" why their test methods are invalid (for all vendors involved). Or the ones where the "techies" had decided ahead of time which product they wanted to use, so the "benchmark" was designed such that any other product than that would lose (my favorite was the one where they had a list of 3 criteria, highest to lowest importance. We ran the bm and had the best numbers for priority #1. All of a sudden, the order was changed - #2 was most important. We rerun the bm and show better numbers on that. Now #3 is top dog. Repeat the exercise. Again, we did best. We're the obvious choice, no? Nope - now criteria 4 gets added, and it is, of course, the most important. At this point I tell the rep, "walk away from this one, it's hopeless.") There are valid technical analyses, and there are exercises to try to show your boss how clever you are while wasting time making vendors run a technical obstacle course. I always loved a valid technical shootout, win or lose; the others, I could do without. And me a sales rep? Yegads, what a thought! Dave