Shrinking the Budget

  • Agree, but I'm not aware of whether the actor did, or did not, do any work. Certainly it could be a piece written from research or from information delivered to him, or the actor might have been a help desk person or an IT admin assistant while trying to get the acting going.

    My only point was I wouldn't disparage someone because of a former profession without knowing more.

  • Yep, I'm one of those effected by a shrinking budget. Starting in 2008 the place I worked at before began a series of layoffs and trimming services we offered, by 60%. I was one of those laid off at the end of June 2014, in a last ditch effort to continue to provide what little they still do. I guess it worked, because they didn't lay anyone off at the end of June 2015, but WOW at what cost! Several programs and services scraped in an effort to prevent the whole non-profit from being completely mothballed. Under such circumstances I don't think there was anything, anyone who was effected, could have done. No argument, no matter how valid or reasonable, to save one's job/position. My advise to anyone facing that, do your best to keep up what skills you can. I thank God I've got a new job. The others laid off with me haven't been so lucky.

    Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Hah! Great topic: Budgets. Looking back, I think of all those stories of music artists lamenting that they didn't have any business education before they signed that contract. I believe that if you want to effectively battle claims like the 'magic' being peddled in that article you'd best learn a little accounting and economic theory. IMO, being able to explain intangible costs and quantifying productivity in the context of a technical solution will help your case far more than making a technical argument about the superiority of your favorite flavor of tech to senior management (who probably won't understand or care but will care very much about the price tag).

    Concrete costs are easy for management to identify. You as the IT professional need to show them the potential risks and hidden costs of such decisions.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/19/2015)


    ...I wouldn't disparage someone because of a former profession without knowing more.

    Hence my qualifying "I may be wrong". Another stroll around the block anyone?

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • call.copse (11/19/2015)


    ...(OT) BTW I'll be crossing my fingers for the Albion to finally reach the promised land, make next season a bit more fun 😎 I'd be delighted to meet up for a pint beforehand if a new south coast derby came off. Poor old Cherries eh?

    I now live in the Midlands surrounded by Stoke, Wolves, Villa, WBA and Stafford Rangers fans, however, if there is a derby we should make the effort for a meet, beer and football cheer!!!

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • lshanahan (11/19/2015)


    ...From a Google search I ran across this elsewhere on TechRepublic:

    ...Plenty o' Micro$oft bashing...

    So not technical journalism from Jack after all. Well found lshanahan.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • His website is getjackd.net

    Enter getjackd.net. and see what happens.

    (add the extra period at the end)

    The more you are prepared, the less you need it.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/19/2015)


    Good note, but I wouldn't disparage someone as an actor meaning they have no knowledge. A certain former guitar player from Queen is a PhD working in the space program in the UK. After all, I'm an economist by schooling.

    ...and an actor has become president of the United States.

  • Gary Varga (11/19/2015)


    Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/19/2015)


    ...I wouldn't disparage someone because of a former profession without knowing more.

    Hence my qualifying "I may be wrong". Another stroll around the block anyone?

    It was fine, but a bit buried in the para. I wanted to be sure people weren't just dismissing something from a particular person because of a profession.

  • David.Poole (11/19/2015)


    Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/19/2015)


    Good note, but I wouldn't disparage someone as an actor meaning they have no knowledge. A certain former guitar player from Queen is a PhD working in the space program in the UK. After all, I'm an economist by schooling.

    ...and an actor has become president of the United States.

    The latter was quite disturbing IMHO...

  • Sean Redmond (11/19/2015)


    Has anyone tried serious licence-saving activities like transferring those DBs that can be transferred to SQL Server Express Edition instances and re-writing SQL Server Agent jobs for the windows Scheduler? I can see it making sense for a cash-strapped startup or charity where things are being set up from scratch, but, to what extent is it sensible for running systems, or rather, how many systems would need to be moved for the migration to make financial sense?

    We've done some of that in the small scale (individual team trying to save budget), but from a corporate wide perspective it has been far more useful to set up a single "shared" SQL Server. It uses core licensing and houses several hundred smaller databases. No application code is allowed on that box and the databases living there have to play well with others. That cut down dramatically the number of random or rogue SQL installs in the environment.

  • I only use SQL Server Express for desktop or workgroup applications. If you implement in enterprise production, I suspect that you don't know what you are doing. Windows Scheduler is an admin tool, not an enterprise job scheduler. If you use it for enterprise production, etc.

  • Actually Regan was a state governor before he became president so he had experience of running one of the largest states of the USA with an economy larger than many countries

  • Andrew..Peterson (11/19/2015)


    ...Enter getjackd.net. and see what happens.

    (add the extra period at the end)

    11. Don't bother with security as all the people in the world are trustworthy.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • Hi George,

    Since it is theoretically possible to run everything in SQL Server with TSQL scripts and TSQL scripts can be scheduled to run with sqlcmd, it is theoretically possible to run many DBs in a SQL Server Express instance, assuming that the volume and frequency of changes doesn't swamp the 1 core allowed. If the DB is small and fits into 10GB, no cross-DB-chaining is required and transactions are easier. Otherwise it gets trickier.

    Since the theme of the article is shrinking the budget and since it is theoretically possible, I was wondering aloud whether anyone had tried it. It would certainly be a feather in a DBA's cap if said DBA could consolidate, say, 3 small DBs into 3 SQL Server Express instances when an upgrade from SQL Server 2005 was looming and the upgrade costs would be in the realm of many tens of thousands of euros/dollars/pounds (or whatever you're having yourself).

    I have seen a few systems where, it seems to me, that it would have made financial sense to have installed SQL Server Express edition (DB size was 2GB) but the DBA recoiled in horror at the loss of SSIS (which went unused) and SQL Server Agent (which made life comfortable).

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