On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Stroller
<..hidden..>wrote:
On 27 Jun 2009, at 00:51, Chris Travers wrote:
I have a client with a 1.2.18 install but with only about 2-dozen
entries. I could easily have those reentered into 1.3 if 1.3 is
considered stable enough.
Well, if this was important to do, my suggestion would be to do so
along with a support contract and consultation as to what exactly
would be needed to make it work for the business.
I imagine the concern might be over migration to 1.3 in the future.
I think you've said at least once that it's not certain whether safe
migration of data from 1.2 will be possible - that it may be better to
start a new database from scratch (at the beginning of a financial
year?) when adopting 1.3.
Well there are cases where 1.3 is better for some users at the moment than
1.2. The things that work, work well. The things that don't work yet don't
work at all.
The use case for this is where either heavy integration is required (and
human oversight over that integration is important), where the transactional
volume is very high, or where separation of duties is required....
AND
where interactions with customers using the software is minimal (i.e. check
printing works, but I don;t think that other transactions print cleanly at
the moment). For example, invoice printing is currently not working.
The areas which work are fairly well tested. The areas which don't work
usually error out cleanly.
I would imagine that, if this is the case, there will be a strong
temptation for new users to adopt 1.3 "before it's ready". This may
not be advisable, perhaps, but it is understandable.
Well, my job here is to provide what information may be needed so that folk
can decide whether or not this is the way they want to go. My current
recommendation is to consult with my business FIRST, and discuss support
options. The fact is that while in a few cases it may be preferable to work
with this software while it is in development, this is a VERY different
process from working with production versions, and failure to follow these
processes carefully can result in severe problems. Such approaches require
much more cooperation with developers, awareness of what business processes
are relied on, etc. Furthermore, in some cases, it may be preferable to
merely backport a few things from 1.3 to 1.2 rather than moving to a system
under active development.
However, if 1.2 works reasonably well for you, then it would be a mistake to
migrate before 1.3.0 is released.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers