Restoring? Not so fast.

One of this pilot fish's applications is a custom-built program that takes data from different computers and plugs them into several databases -- after which the original data is deleted.

"The operators are supposed to verify it's all correct before deleting the data," says fish. "We do weekly backs to tapes, which are then mailed back to us.

"I got a call from a manager at one site, who wanted to restore the data from the previous night. I had no way of doing this, so I went to our admins and asked them.

"They figured out we might be able to do it if we restored the whole database to a corporate server, then forced the program to look at it and it might allow us to extract the data. We had done a backup that night, so we did have the data coming to us.

"Basically, we would have to wait for the tape to get to us, which would take two to three days, restore the database -- another one or two days -- and then force the program to look at the new one.

"I told the manager we could get it done in about a week or so.

"The manager's response: 'Oh, we needed it tonight.'"

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