GilaMonster (12/12/2007)
Yup. I've seen some nasty stuff from vender software. From 38 indexes in one table, with the same leading column, to 'temporary' tables that don't get dropped (we had 150000 tables after a year and we didn't know if we could drop them) to reimplementing the nested loop join in CLR.Jeff, I envy the position you have. Here we get absolutely no say in what products are bought (except for DBA-type tools) and have to 'make it work' regardless of what.
Usually the database team are the last people consulted about anything, from product purchases, to server specs, to table and database design
*sigh* Sorry, I'm ranting again
Oh I hear that - I knew I was in trouble when I actually got the "lead developer" of one of these gems to go look up "normalization". There have been times where I've found myself "isolating" them 3rd party products, and starting to cut off its various features to replace them with ones I've written that will actually work without killing a dedicated server.
It's amazing how much better their code gets when they figure out that you're about to create your OWN improved version of their POS product (and no - that doesn't stand for "point of sale").
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?