Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Programming

24.5. Summary

Well, that gives you a few things to think about. It's really easy as a developer to think about many administrative tasks and establish what the inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy called an "SEP" field. That's something that makes things like administration seem invisible because it's "somebody else's problem." Don't go there!

A project I'm familiar with from several years ago is a wonderful example of taking responsibility for what can happen. A wonderful system was developed for a nonprofit group that operates in the northwestern United States. After about eight months of operation, an emergency call was placed to the company that developed the software (it was a custom job). After some discussion, it was determined that the database had somehow become corrupted, and it was recommended to the customer that the database be restored from a backup. The response? "Backup?" The development company in question missed something very important — they knew they had an inexperienced customer that would have no administration staff, and who was going to tell the customer to do backups and help set it up if the development company didn't? I'm happy to say that the development company in question learned from that experience — and so should you.

Think about administration issues as you're doing your design and especially in your deployment plan. If you plan ahead to simplify the administration of your system, you'll find that your system is much more ...