Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Mon Jun 8 12:33:59 CDT 2009
Hi Robert: You have not been around much. ;-) I work with some of the largest franchisees (McDonalds, Sony, Staples, Wal-Mart etc) and with virtually all the local banks (BNS, CIBC, RBC, BMO, HSBC etc). Desktops may be all Windows but step away from the front counters for a moment and there could be any type of OSs in the back office and at corporate head-quarters. Managers also like their perks and in some case that mean they have Macs. When it comes to BE servers the mix is 30-70. These servers are not cheap as they are top end. (Dell, HP and IBM) Even MS uses(d) Linux networks. Three years ago even Microsoft was using a large Linux site in San Francisco to host their Hot-mail. I worked for years with our local provincial government and all their big databases were in Oracle and other miscellaneous DBs on Linux... In fact most big systems were Linux based. I worked for Maps-BC through a number of departments and their desktop systems were mostly Linux running Arc-Info and InterGraph mapping software... 5 floors of computers. I supported one of the very few MS SQL systems (and wrote all the software for the system) but just could not penetrate the system culture and get more similar systems adopted... believe me, I tried. Most websites, I have run across are hosted on Linux boxes... even our own DBA mail. I have been slowly seeing desktops with various versions of Linux popping up (after all this is a university town) but it is not a flood. I will be honest with you in that I do not care which systems I work with. All I am interested in is consistency, reliability and hopefully cross-platform support... Your experiences are obviously different than mine. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Robert Stewart Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 8:26 AM To: dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Problem while publishing ADO.NET Data Service... To butt in here... A Silverlight program requires the Silverlight add in. There is one to run under Linux also and one being developed for Mac. Having said that, I have NEVER seen a "mixed environment" in any corporate office in my life as an IT person. ALL of the companies that I have dealt with are in Windows OS. And, isn't Silverlight trying to do the same thing that Flash has done, go across platforms? To be blunt, I have made my living using Microsoft software. If it was not good, then the Open source world would be dominate. They are not. I think you get what you pay for with open source. Although, some people feel that you do not get what you pay for with MS. Personally, if someone wants something to run on Linux, I send them looking for someone else to do it. I might consider doing it if Silverlight will do the cross-platform thing. Otherwise, I am an MS kind of guy. Remember that we are working with Beta software in Silverlight 3.0. And, here at home, I am also working with Windows 7 and VS 2010. One of which is RC and the other beta. And, I am running them on a VM. So, I really do not care what they need to run. It can be wiped out and done over in a hour or so. The point is that I am getting ahead of the learning curve on all of the changes that are in the next release. And at the same time, creating a piece of software that I will be "renting" under a software as a service plan. My mantra is do it right the first time, customize it to the clients requirements and leave them to it. I had one customer that went 8 years before calling me to change their MS Access program because of the way I did it the first time. They only called because they need to add new functionality. That is the way it should always be. At 12:00 PM 6/7/2009, you wrote: >Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 09:54:42 -0700 >From: "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> >Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Problem while publishing ADO.NET Data Service... >To: "'Salakhetdinov Shamil'" <mcp2004 at mail.ru>, "'Discussion > concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.'" > <dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com> >Message-ID: > <24FBF921E25D4277BCB79042D579EE6C at creativesystemdesigns.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Hi Shamil: > >I have been watching this thread for a bit and was wondering, if proceeding >along this direction is in fact tying the designers and users to a very >proprietary desktop and set of BE services? > >Just to get much of the apps running requires the very latest patches and >specific downloads, products that are not integrated into the default >Windows OS. Only the most carefully managed office location would be able to >even run this technology. > > >From my point of view the following is the reality: >1. On most sites I am just the contractor and not as the head IT guy. >2. Clients want to hire me not marry me. >3. Many sites using 'mixed' desktops (Windows/Mac/Linux). >4. The trend is towards 'portability' on cross-platform environments. > >On the other hand, this is all great fun technology and I have been very >much enjoying this thread. > >Jim _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com