I Need This Done Monday Morning,Which is One Second After Midnight to Start The Dau

Question

Arc GIS Connecting with Oracle, oh yea, this is Easy Pezy!! Did you see the consultant demo this?  It was BOOM BADDA BiNG!

It worked Perfectly!

It worked FAST!!

It did all kinds of stuff, anything you could think of.

I sent the consultant a thank you note. I thought this was great, but the consultant has been less responsive than before I sent this note.

Progress Since Writing This Note

I have made it pretty far past where I was writing this note to the consultant.  Almost all pieces of everything is working .  There is one hangup,. and that is the thiubng I need fixed in 28 hours.  It is a small thing, so I hope it will be completed quickly.  The ugly part is it is one of those critical parts the all the work worth nothing without this part fixed.

Problem details are at this post

MillieBuckner · Answer

Thank you for responding and sharing your experience. It helps immensely to read cases that seem so much like my own. It helps me see I am not a complete moron all the time.

Midnight was an arbitrary time I picked because I need to get a small mountain of work done in the next few weeks, and this is my first experience working with geodata. It turned out the geodatabase in Oracle is not critical to the most urgent current objectives. My boss wants the geodatabase in there. However, last year, the work I am doing now was completed with no geodatabase in Oracle. So, I am focusing on getting the deliverables done, deploying the geodb in Oracle after getting past this short-term deadline (April 29).

I think I have a handle on enough to meet the deadline, but there is little time to lose.

Brian_Wilson · Answer

I hit a similar moment setting up a server connection yesterday too. I didn't need it to work at midnight though so I left it.

They leave you hanging, no options for support at midnight on a Saturday, and no path forward... just that empty text box taunting you. Try. Try again. Try this. Try that. Search, find a post on Stack Exchange that has... no solution. Try again. And again...

And every time, a useless error message. Usually the same one.

They could do way way way better.

At the very least an extended error message box. The errors might be hard to interpret but ERROR THERE WAS A COM ERROR" is just pure 100% useless aggravation.

And they have been giving us useless error messages as long as I have used their products, close on 20 years now. No improvements. It is intentional: bad software = support contracts = continuous revenue stream. Good software = no need to upgrade in a year and no need for a contract.

I used to marvel at conferences when Jack would announce a noxious bug had been fixed and the crowd would applaud. They should have been throwing bundled stacks of ArcUser at him.

It's not going to change, so get used to it.

JoshuaBixby · Answer

Honestly, I have no idea what the question is for this post, or are you just sharing a story about working with a consultant?