You are a consultant specializing in data and database administration.You are me
ID: 3659060 • Letter: Y
Question
You are a consultant specializing in data and database administration.You are meeting with various people who work for a potential new client. Before taking them on as a client, you want to get some idea of what they need and how much work its going to take.
Owner
Were not exactly a small business, but were not all that big. We dont have any programmers, exactly, but we have some people who know Visual Basic and take care of some small applications weve written ourselves. If we need something big or something they dont know how to do, we contract out. Theres a lot of stuff we just do from query windows because its easier. At least, its faster. My biggest concern is about what things they might see that they shouldnt.
Accountant
Accounting is separate from the business prouduction database. Ipull the information that I need off the business database and then manually post it in the accounting application. It would be better if I could get things set up where I just get information I need. Last tiem we had someone in, he created views that give me the data, but they dont limit it by date, so its still more complicated then I like. He even showed me how to create them and I guess I could do it that way, but ti seems like more work than its really worth. Eventually, we want to automate the whole process.
Data Entry Lead
We have an application for entering information about equipment and services, but not new customers. I have a checklist cheatsheet, but its easy to mistype something and murder to find the mistake. Its crazy to have to type all that. Most of the time its the same for every customer. Sure,there are exceptions, but not that many.
Computer Guy
If something goes wrong with one of the computers, its my job to fix it. Im self-taught mostly. If it wasnt for my library and the Internet, Id be lost most of the time. The one thing I dont do is any of the Visual Basic stuff. Dont know how, dont want to know how. I can do some of the database stuff if I have to. I dont mind the regular maintenance stuff, but it does get tiem consuming and Im doing the same thing every month.
What I dont like is giong in and making changes, and I get nervous if theres a problem with the database because most of the time I have no idea how to fix it. My biggest problem is that the stupid thing keeps growing, and Im not sure why because it doesnt need the space. Must be something in the application. About every month, I have to run through my checklist to shrink down the database file. If I dont catch it in time, we run out of space and things really go crazy. I wish there was ome way I could get a warning when it gets close. Or better yet, have the stupd thing fix itself.
1. How can you let the "computer guy" know if there is a problem?
Explanation / Answer
We can automate it by deleting the not needed data and also storing data in more precise manner by merging the things to occupy less data.
Hence available space never reaches a threshold point.
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