DB export but restricted access?

[Antman]

Hi,

The client has a payroll system that is reaching end-of-life and is not getting supported any more. They've decided to move to a hosted system by another supplier. The original supplier has come in with an offer to maintain the current system for the 6 years legally required.

However the offer seems to be a bit high, now I'm not the most techy person around but I'd have done an export of the whole database (table definitions, keys, ref integrity etc.) into access/oracle and then done an export of the actual data as well. However as it's payroll data I nor hardly anybody else have access to their system.

The payroll team (are even less techy than me) have said that they don't have access to the database (even though it's hosted on-site) as the vendor has locked it down(?) So for them to export the data, they'd have to use the cognos reports for the solution to do a month by month export into CSV file which would take ages and they don't have the time with RTI, auto-enrollment etc. etc.

First off, can the vendor lock-down a database that they sell to a client and is hosted at the client site? That might be a stupid question but I'm no techie. I'm aware that there might be contractual issues but physically no access?

Thanks

[tranceporter]

Depends on the contract between the client and the vendor. Is it a white label software provided by the vendor to the client? Is it safe to assume that the vendor software is also used by other clients, and they use the same database? That would explain why they lock it down, because that database would have payroll info about other clients as well. Which also explains why they only expose that data in the form of "reports" for each individual client to consume. That's my gut feeling anyway.

Edit--
Just re-read the last paragraph. If the database is hosted on client site, then it is not very likely to be shared among other vendor clients. So maybe the payroll team have lost the documents on how to access the payroll database, and are playing a game of cover-up. Or they cannot be hassled to access the database.
Also, is it is a must to export to access/oracle? Or you can use SQL Server? What software does the payroll database use? flat files?

[original PM]

hmmm it depends where we are we have a database team who are a bunch of nazi's

they lock everything down and then if you need anything it takes days to get access and you need to jump though many many pointless hoops.

they seem to forget that they exist to service the data - not the other way around.

but for the OP is there no database team on site - who is the db administrator?

[jmo21]

Are there any local techies with access or is it locked down completly?

There are 3 simple reasons for this:
1) They don't want anyone going in and breaking something (a stored proc, a view, whatever) that THEY would be responsible for with an SLA - they could waste time/money tracking down something that is not their fault
2) If anyone has access to write custom reports, queries, then that could be something that could degrade performance of the main app, but they would be the first people called with "your app is really slow" complaints, and again would have to waste time/money tracking it down.
3) Money - if you want a new report written outside of orginal reqs, they want to be the ones doing it so they can charge you for it.

[tranceporter]

hmmm it depends where we are we have a database team who are a bunch of nazi's

they lock everything down and then if you need anything it takes days to get access and you need to jump though many many pointless hoops.

they seem to forget that they exist to service the data - not the other way around.

but for the OP is there no database team on site - who is the db administrator?

Typical in big organizations with a lot of red tape. Raise change requests in BMC Remedy, and schedule them to be processed 15 days in future, only to find that it falls in the embargo period

[Antman]

thanks, it is on-site, the issues are that it'll be unsupported and the server it runs on Win 2003 will be out of support soon. Payroll have decided I think that they don't want to get their hands dirty and would rather pay someone to host the existing solution.

BUT the price quoted seems high for a payroll system for 3000 (63k over the 7 years) - hell I'll do it for half that, how hard can it be?

I'm guessing finance haven't noticed this (the last meeting they seemed to give the impression they thought that it'd be 2-3k per year after initial hosting charges) or they have and they have more power in the company than I thought!

[original PM]

thanks, it is on-site, the issues are that it'll be unsupported and the server it runs on Win 2003 will be out of support soon. Payroll have decided I think that they don't want to get their hands dirty and would rather pay someone to host the existing solution.

BUT the price quoted seems high for a payroll system for 3000 (63k over the 7 years) - hell I'll do it for half that, how hard can it be?

I'm guessing finance haven't noticed this (the last meeting they seemed to give the impression they thought that it'd be 2-3k per year after initial hosting charges) or they have and they have more power in the company than I thought!

63k is not that much in the grand scheme of things

[eek]

63k is not that much in the grand scheme of things

9k a year for 7 years. or £3 an employee a year. Its not that much when you look at it that way.