I don’t know where you got your information, justlurking, but all offers of professional help have not been spurned, publicly or otherwise.
Security is a legitimate reason for John to deny anyone access to the FR servers, databases, software, etc. Suppose John accepted an offer and then that person was banned at some later date. John then has to deal with someone who knows the code and the configuration AND has a grudge. Been there, done that. It ain’t fun.
Even if security weren’t a concern, lack of knowledge about the software & hardware environment is. Having someone attempt to troubleshoot the problem could ultimately make John’s job more difficult because he has to answer basic questions about the environment every few minutes. “Where’s this/that? Why did you do it this/that way? What might happen if we change this/that?” It’s a frustration he doesn’t need.
Jim & John aren’t being difficult, prideful, or stubborn. They’re doing what they can with the resources they have in a tough situation.
Bump! Good night, God bless and keep you and your precious family, dearest Tex!
I posted the following to JR on another thread last week. I’m posting it here as a reference.
As an experienced software developer and unix systems & database administrator, it wears me out when people make blanket statements without any intimate knowledge of the operating environment. Alerting management and administrators that a problem exists and expressing the level of its severity is acceptable. Making suggestions is acceptable. Offering help is acceptable. Making blanket statements about what is obviously the problem and how easy it is to fix are unacceptable and unappreciated.
No, it is absolutely not a simple matter to “upload the code” to a “new hosting company.” Software is designed, coded, and configured to run in specific operating environments. Generally speaking, changing operating environments requires configuration changes at multiple places: the network, the hardware, the operating system, the database(s), and the software. It can and usually does require changes to the actual software, meaning how the software is written. Unless the operating environment was specifically designed to be portable across platforms and environments (most aren’t), it probably isn’t easily ported.
Troubleshooting performance issues is also not a simple matter. It is almost always not a matter of “either this or that.” It is almost always a combination of solutions, which means a combination of resources must be examined in multiple combinations at multiple times from multiple perspectives: network, hardware, database, and software. Money is rarely the easy answer. When it is, the IT staff hollers “Yeehaw!” and gets to work, eager to fix the damn thing and be done with the complaints.
I got my information from the last thread about this issue. Several people, including you, offered assistance. Jim replied: "Thanks, but no thanks." However, I hope they privately accepted assistance from someone who knows what they are doing.
Jim & John aren’t being difficult, prideful, or stubborn. They’re doing what they can with the resources they have in a tough situation.
And that's why no progress is being made.
This is what I do for a living. I collect information from a client's systems, analyze it, and show them where it is failing or will fail as load increases. No changes are required: almost all of the data is already available, and you just need someone that knows how to make sense of it. On the rare occasions that I need more data, the customer uses tools they already have and I help them to configure them to collect the additional data.
I've done this for long enough and at enough different clients that I can build a working hypothesis from limited information. My next step would be to construct a data collection and analysis strategy to either prove or disprove the hypothesis, and then iterate/adjust until the customer gets the answer they asked for.
I don't make changes to the customer's system(s). They do it, with my direction/assistance if they need it. But, any wholesale implementation change is beyond the scope of what I do. I only identify the problem they need to address, and it is typically a software design issue, not a hardware capacity problem. Sometimes we get lucky and it's just a small software configuration change, but it's rare.
I've been fingerprinted, background-checked, and drug-tested so many times that I've lost count. I just finished analysis of a system that half of the people reading this message probably used in the past year, albeit unknowingly. If my clients can trust an outsider to help them, any "security issues" at FR are easily addressed by checking references.
But, I'm not volunteering. I can't. Even if I did it for free, my employer would consider it a conflict of interest. And my typical hourly rate would consume FR's entire hardware upgrade budget in a few days.