In my career, I've given quite a few demos of various types of software, usually in an attempt to show how the application in its best possible light. I suspect that most people giving software demos engage in some level of simplification of a problem, or contriving one completely so as to make the software appear as simple as possible to use. One university thinks that Oracle went a bit too far, promising capabilities and misleading them about the costs and customizations that would be needed.

I'm sure there are similar examples of this for all software vendors, especially those that sell large software packages such as ERP applications. Some are probably without merit, and are the result of customers not fully understanding what they are buying, but some are probably valid complaints where salespeople have misled customers in order to complete a sale.

Read the rest of "Truth and Demos" at SQLServerCentral.