Bugs were, are and will be. There’s no software without bugs. Even greatest software vendors can’t guarantee bug-free products, as quality costs skyrockets above some level.
All those statements are true and quite obvious, but still they surprise me somehow. During last two days I’ve tested 2 grand products - ACA.NET 7.0.6 and MS SQL Server 2012 and I had issues with both of them. Nothing that serious of course, I was able to propose walk-arounds on my own, but that illustrates how complicated software engineering is - MS SQL Server is a critical, robust RDMBS package and it’s not possible to make it fault-free even for installation stage. One of my superiors used to say that software engineering is the most complex engineering humankind has ever invented and even brain surgery is nothing when compared to that. Needless to say, I second that eagerly.
Anyway, I’m not going to b*tch on software quality - the more important fact is that SQL Server 2012 is finally released. As it took me few hours to upgrade properly, I can’t give you many impressions yet, but it looks promising:
- SQL Server Data Tools (for VS2010)
- Data Quality Services (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff877917(v=SQL.110).aspx)
- MDS (Master Data Services) and Stream Insight 2.0 included in base package
- … and zillion of other features I don’t really care much :)