Probably the most common question that the Red Gate developer tools support gets is "Does your X work with Y?" where X is your bit of software and Y is a bit of software made by a different company. This is probably the least answerable question in the known universe.
Start with the obvious - "Does X work?" - full stop. Because with millions of possible configurations in Windows, it's entirely possible that it won't "work" at all. But I can personally guarantee you that it "works on my machine"!
Second of all, what does "work" mean? Several things that come to mind:
- Can X and Y peacefully coexist on the same computer?
- Does X extend the functionality of Y?
- Is X a replacement for Y?
- Can the output from X be processed by Y?
- Does the new version of Y cause the old version of X to fail?
- If I run X and Y at the same time, will it Div/0 and open a hole in the universe?
Finally, as I already mentioned, the question could be about
Fear,
Uncertainty, and
Doubt.
For instance, if a new version of Microsoft .NET Framework comes out, there is a doubt that your program will not function correctly with it. I've heard of a dutiful network administrator mass-emailing every vendor he has bought any software from when a new version of SQL Server is on the horizon - "Does X work with the new version of SQL Server"?
I believe it's a bit lazy to ask a question this way and you may not get the answer you expect, unless you are perhaps more specific about the particular functionality you are interested in.