Boss comes in, his left ear glowing from an hour-long conference-call.
“New job for us,” he announces, “Remember we migrated all that data out of that old database ages ago?”
We nod and mumble, not wanting to get drawn into that particular slough of despond again.
“Well, the client reckons we’ve done it wrong and they want us to check all the data for discrepancies.”
Groan. How tedious. The original work was done by a freelancer who has since retired to the Bahamas on the money we paid him.
“OK,” I sigh, “Where’s the old database hosted?”
It’s not there anymore.” Replies Boss, “They’ve deleted it.”
“Well I like a challenge. “ I quip, “How are we to communicate with this deceased database then? Clairvoyance? Ouija board - could take a while and we don't have any tumblers.”
The unexpectedly rubber edge of my rapier wit bounces harmlessly off Boss’s icy glare. “There’s a backup of it that just needs restoring.”
“OK, where’s that then?”
“It’s on the public share in Resourcing’s domain.”
I try the IP address he gives me. “Nope, no access to there from here.” I inform him.
“Never mind,” he says, “We’ll get server support to copy it for us.”
“Where’s it going then?” I say. He tells me and I try logging in there, thinking it would save a bit of time to set up folders and suchlike. “Windows could not log you on….blah, blah...” So, no access to that either then.
“I’ll get it sorted,” he says wandering off.
“The database software is on there though, right?” I call to his rapidly departing back.
“Nah, you’ll have to install it,” he replies.
"Do we have the install files?"
"No, you'll have to download them."
So.
We have the deceased remains of a database sitting on a server I can’t access, which needs to go to another server I can’t access, upon which there’s no software to run it anyway.
I start to sing quietly.
“Wake up ev’ry mornin’, same thing for breakfas’ so that every mouth can beeee…”
“And you can cut that out for a start!” he snaps.
*Sigh*.
