I really appreciate the kind words, I am considering cross posting it on to SDN to see what feedback I get.

Glad you enjoyed it and it was worth the wait

Chris

I particularly liked the comparison to the Grey Council speaking externally with a single voice even when divided internally. This is a tip that many IT departments don’t get right with dangerous results.

That was exactly my case when I started implementing monitoring functionality with perl. We couldn’t get money for monitoring tools, so I wrote what I needed, and it turned out to be a life-saver, indeed!

@KK – perfect example of CCMS custom monitoring routines, too!

@Steve – I remember working at my University wondering why they didn’t even have Unix admins, until I realized they did, but their title was “system programmer.”

The analogy I’ve always used is that of driving. You don’t need to know how a car, and in particular its engine, works in order to drive and get from A to B. To drive really well, though, such knowledge is indispensable. In the extreme, for example, Formula 1 drivers know is great detail how their cars work. They can’t do their job without that knowledge.

In the SAP world I would take this one step further. I started out doing Basis admin, but very easily branched out into ABAP programming based on my previous programming experience. From the point of view of understanding what is going on on an SAP system, though, what helped me more was functional understanding. I taught myself first how to use the various functional areas – post POs, journals, etc. – and then how to configure them. I’m certainly no expert in any functional area, but I can get by and in an emergency I have been know to fix the odd problem. Understanding how data flows around the system, and what is going on in each transaction, I find a big help.

In essence, the more you know about what the systems do and how they do it, at all levels, the better you can set up and run the technical infrastructure.

I really could not agree more, I get so frustrated with people who are happy performing repetitive tasks, we were given brains and intelligence to work out better ways of doing things. I would rather spend 55 mins of a repetitive task to automate a way to do it so it takes 4 minutes. It leaves me 1 minute better off that time, but it leaves me 56 minutes better off the next time – hell even if it takes me 2 hours to automate it I’m still better off. I can then blog about it and put it out in the world so others can benefit from it.

Thanks for your comment

Chris

I have never been a massive coder, sure I can take 2 or 3 scripts that do most of what I want and create a working chimera – but with the opportunities that available currently it is possible for people to create something great in a short space of time with few resources. Great to me is not necessarily life altering, but something that make your world and the world of those around you better in some way. It could be an automated installation script or a monitoring script that identifies when a service goes down and allows you to bring it back up remotely.

Thanks for the comment mate

Chris

Cheers
KK

I’ve also enjoyed writing code for many trivial but fun tasks similar to the mapping one you mention, and others. Because, in the end, it’s good to produce something every now and again, not just to fix things when they break. :)

Cheers,
David.