>>Exactly. It largely depends on who the customer is. The bigger, the more complicated, the longer internal communications take and there are more steps in the hierarchy. Also, the policies get stricter, so nobody has the authority but the designated person, and if that person is absent (vacation, convention, sick leave) the authority doesn't get delegated, but instead the task of approval is put on hold.
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>>A similar, but much smaller app, basically a listener which checks the audit of db A for certain kind of change and then sends some portion of it to db B, is installed and runs the backlog (usually the changes from last three months) within two hours. I had cases when it took three months. Causes: db B on a different server, nobody knows how to open ports or what is needed to do it; a contractor or a less skilled person installed SQL server; nobody there to supply the pieces of the connectstring; my account doesn't have the permission to run cmd.exe and this runs as a scheduled task; doesn't have permission to create a scheduled task; doesn't have scheduled tasks in the control panel etc etc. Just finding who can remove these limitations sometimes takes days.
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>>Ah and the most ridiculous piece of the permissions game: I created a folder where to put this listener, unzipped it, started editing its ini file and then didn't have the permissions to save it (!). After sending an email to admin, tried to give myself the rights - and I had the right to give myself rights (!). Who'd a thunk...
>
>Thanks for sharing all this. It is of course very useful.

I hope you aren't kidding... I was just venting my frustration. But who knows, if I have this kind of problem so often, chances are somebody else has it too, or will have. So at least they are warned. And I feel better now :).