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RE: Do you have a big fat "WE DON'T SUPPORT THAT!" disclaimer?
Subject:RE: Do you have a big fat "WE DON'T SUPPORT THAT!" disclaimer? From:tstorer -at- free -dot- fr To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:54:42 -0700
> > Has anyone run into this, and as a result inserted some sort
> > of disclaimer in the docs saying "If we don't say it works
> > this way, don't assume it does"? Would that have any affect,
> > desirable or otherwise?
>
> In the application server space, it's hard to say you don't support
> something -- based on the sheer volume of "middleware" or "connector"
> products that make just about *anything* possible.
I think there's a difference between "supported" functionality, i.e. what
the product is intended to do, and supported configurations, i.e. under
what conditions of deployment with various third-party products can a
product be expected to work.
For the first, I agree with the previous posters that if the documentation
doesn't say you *can* do something, then it's not a bug if it doesn't.
For the second, my employer, a major player in the business intelligence
sector, publishes a "Product Availability Report" (PAR) on the web which
exhaustively lists all supported configurations: this product works with
these RDBMSs, these web browsers, these application servers, in these
languages, and so on. These reflect configurations that have been fully
tested so we are confident we can commit to their working correctly. If a
customer uses something that isn't in the list of supported configurations
and have problems, our tech support will not necessarily give them the
time of day (of course if the customer is big enough, exceptions will be
made).
In the doc and online help, we have a standard sentence saying "for full
information on supported configurations, see <link to website>."
On the one hand, this means the company is covered against bugs occurring
in all the infinite possible configurations they didn't test. On the
other, it means we don't have to update the install & config doc with each
major and minor release and service pack to reflect the constant changes
in this considerably voluminous information.
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