Jerry Dennany's Occasional Clue

Hope you somehow get the solution during a night sleep?

And ask around a lot and hope someone knows what you're talking about.

If Google and forums, blogs etc fail, hope is the last thing remaining :)

Depends on whether you are merely *replicating* an expensive environment, or if you've also got a production expensive environment that you're mirroring. In the latter case, I'd expect the vendor to work with you very closely to help resolve the issue, since that's a part of what you're paying for.

In the case where you're just experimenting (for example, setting things up to test using MSDN Univ. licenses), I'd suggest either using PSS, or cultivating contacts with the team responsible for the software you're testing. Given the expense and effort of setting up such environments, these teams probably don't get nearly as much customer input as, say, the ASP.NET team, so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd be eager for feedback from someone willing to set the environment up properly.

We have multiple Citrix consultants on site, all paid quite nicely, but they seem clueless about development, let alone .NET development. They've said all along they had people running .NET successfully on Citrix, but they've never once bothered to tell us who, even though we've asked repeatedly. They, and everyone else, just keep going over the same mantra about using the proper registry keys and user directories, which have nothing to do with .NET. I would have thought they would be eager to work with us also, especially given the size of our endeavor, but they apparently see themselves more as an O/S add-on, only willing to support configuration. They don't seem to appreciate that software might have issues in their environment that could preclude us from using it possibly.

Interesting post. Perhaps the answer is, you fall back on resources that existed pre-internet:

1. Vendors--yeah, they're shady at times, but they also have a vested interest in helping you succeed with their product. If you can get to the right people (the developers of the product) you can definitely get competent help.

2. Experimentation--careful documentation of situations, methods and proposed solutions have often shown the answer to be right in front of my face--even before I looked on the internet.

3. Analogy--sometimes this way of knowing can be deceptive, but other times it can be useful. What other systems are similar to your setup? It's unlikely that you are doing something entirely new under the sun--there are probably aspects of your problem that have been attacked (and possibly even solved) by others.

But the short answer is, yes, you're right. When you're on the bleeding edge of devlopment, you can't find answers on the Internet. You can, perhaps, find analgous situations, but the definition of bleeding edge is that you're out there alone. That means that the triumphs (and mistakes) are yours alone to make. Enjoy.

Dan