From time to time I get email from developers asking for help. I am always very happy to see what I can do. The topics often trigger an idea for a blog post (like this one), a developer skill sprint, a demo and a webinar. So, keep those emails coming and I will do what I can to answer and/or redirect you to other sources of information and help. Here is my common list of places where you can get help with issues, questions and suggestions. Quality Portal: See if a problem is fixed or has a wo...

I am a pretty direct person and do support in pretty much the same way. Over the years it has gotten me in trouble at times. I had customer that I was very direct with last week where I thought for sure things might not go well. However, I wasn't going to change my style. The initial question went something like, I'm making an application with BDS 2006 with InterBase 7.5 using BDE on Vista and something isn't going right. Are their any know issues on InterBase with Vista? I came back with,Well...

Hello blog, I've been gone for a long time. Today I feel inspired... Other than dealing with licensing and registration questions, the most common question I get from customer is something to the tune of "A bunch of users, did a bunch of stuff for a while and then something went wrong with my InterBase server". Something wrong is the server is hung, or it crashed, or it is performing really slowly. Naturally, as presented this is an unsolveable problem with a pleathura of things to look at. For...

I have a few customers who I deal with on a routine basis who I think really have it together in understanding how to get support. I thought I would highlight what I think they are doing right with the idea that other customers could could learn how to get good support. In support you learn to protect yourself from who can call you. There are lots of ways for customers to get support, but generally calling me on my personal line usually isn't it. However, for all of the customers I'm thinking ...

Invariably, in InterBase support we get customers who have XYZ application to use with InterBase who really should be contacting the developer of XYZ application instead of us. However, when they contact the developer, the developer says, "That's an InterBase problem, we can't help you". In one customer case I had today, the customer had support from their developer, but he wouldn't help. IMHO, these developers are disserving their customers. Here are 3 specific examples of customers I have talk...

I've had a common theme with customers of recent. In short, they tell me they have this really terible thing happening and they know the end result, but they have not a clue as how to make it happen. So, although you've never heard of this problem before, could you fix it right away? It seems to be happening more and more. I have one case in particular where the case was created created in January, yet I've yet to be told how to reproduce the problem. There has been a lot interaction w...