tim@sybase.com (Tim Wood) (02/07/89)
This is a personal plea to all current and prospective DBMS users on USENET:
please consider whether the question you are about to ask the USENET
about a specific product could be answered by the vendor of that
product. Questions such as "Does X's product support a C-language
interface?" can be answered more completely and inexpensively
by company X than by the users of USENET. Vendors are only too
happy to regale you with every fact about every feature of their
products, as you might expect. That is their function. If a
specific fact is not covered in the vendor's printed material,
most will welcome calls or correspondence requesting more information.
This is not to discourage questions like "What are your actual experiences
with X's product?" or "How do I [design a database schema/form this query/
otherwise make my application work]?" The first such question can only be
answered by users, the second may be a "support" question requiring a
licence, so USENET is a worthwhile way to gather those answers. USENET can
help fill in some of the unpredictables involved with DBMS purchase and
installation; it should not take the place of product literature or
private communications with the vendor.
Credit yourselves 2c.
-TW
{pacbell,pyramid,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!tim
..not an @ in the bunch...
Voluntary disclaimer: This message is solely my personal opinion.
It is not a representation of Sybase, Inc. OK.jon@altos86.UUCP (Jonathan Ma) (02/08/89)
In article <2898@sybase.sybase.com> tim@sybase.com (Tim Wood) writes: >This is a personal plea to all current and prospective DBMS users on USENET: >please consider whether the question you are about to ask the USENET >about a specific product could be answered by the vendor of that >product. >[...] I believe some people has tried to plea the vendors to have USENET support a few months ago. There were a few people from Informix, Oracle, RTI, and Sybase tried to be more helpful volutarily. Personally, this is a very good idea to take advantage of the USENET community to explain the functionality, features, and other things, so that we can all benefit from the discussion. I'd like to see more of the same things from DBMS practitioners (not just developers). Any VARs on the NET? -Jon- UUCP: {sun,pyramid}!altos86!jon Disclaimer: those openions are mine alone, not my employer's.
jim@tiamat.fsc.com (Jim O'Connor) (02/09/89)
In article <832@altos86.UUCP>, jon@altos86.UUCP (Jonathan Ma) writes: > I believe some people has tried to plea the vendors to have USENET support > a few months ago. There were a few people from Informix, Oracle, RTI, and > Sybase tried to be more helpful volutarily. Personally, this is a very > good idea to take advantage of the USENET community to explain the > functionality, features, and other things, so that we can all benefit from > the discussion. > I'd like to see more of the same things from DBMS practitioners (not just > developers). Any VARs on the NET? > > -Jon- UUCP: {sun,pyramid}!altos86!jon > > Disclaimer: those openions are mine alone, not my employer's. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Boy are these ever NOT THE OPINIONS of his employer. I recently read an article in ALTOS WORLD where Altos was anouncing the existence of a new BBS service where people could log in for support, etc. I thought this sounded really nice until I noticed that they wanted $125 to sign up and $1/minute to access the BBS. While you're trying to urge people to give more support for free (via USENET), your employer seems to be thinking up more ways to make money off their support. --jim ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@FSC.COM Filtration Sciences Corporation 615/821-4022 x. 651