Ok, I had spoke with my Systems Admin who manages our Program client to connect to their Solaris server.

I Asked hime if there were indeed running Solaris and yes they do but he said SOLARIS 9.0 VERSION 8.0....

What the heck that suppose to mean???

That means to me that he doesn't know his posterior from a concavity in the earth...

What it sounds is that maybe the admin meant to say solaris 9 and 8. Or maybe Solaris 9 MU8. Which is the maintenance update that Sun provides.

No...He said they were running Solaris 9 VERSION 8.0

IS THERE specific "VERSIONS" OF SOLARIS??? besides what he means by Version 8 ???

I dont understand.

SO there running SOLARIS 9.0 VERSION 8.0....

Well if you're going to be pedantic about what "he said" then "he" will have to explain it.

The point the replies were making is that this is NOT standard terminology when speaking of Solaris. A lot of people use the terms "release" and "version" very loosely. For example I always cringe when I hear people say "I'm using Linux version 2.6". Very often they mean they are using "kernel" version 2.6 so you have guess what actual Distro and what actual "version" of that distro they are running.

Rather than asking him what "version" ask him to give you the output of the commands:
uname -a
-AND-
cat /etc/release

Better yet what you MIGHT ask is the question that led you to ask what "version" you're running in the first place.

e.g.
User: What version of Solaris are we running?
Admin: Why do you want to know?
User: I want to install asteroids and don't know which of the precompiled binaries I found at www.hackme.ru I should use.
Admin: Excuse me - I need to get back to you later. (Quickly runs and locks your account.)

I'm voting for update 8, assuming there is such an update :-)

Sometimes I also use "technically incorrect" terminology if it makes it easier to deal with user questions... Also, sometimes I *gasp* make a mistake and use the wrong word :-)

Funny - I know I've annoyed many a user by asking questions in response to questions but it has saved me tons of grief.

When I was young and foolishly helpful people would ask something seemingly innocuous like: "Can servers be rebooted automatically."
Naively assuming they were asking theoretical questions I would simply reply: "Yes." Often I would later see a memo (yes I'm old enough that it wasn't email back then) to everyone in the organization from the person that asked saying something like:

"As per my discussion with [jlightner] we will automatically reboot all servers each day at noon in order to force logout of all accounts."

Of course then I, rather than the author, would have to respond to all the complaints about this "decision". For some reason people have a tendency to believe whatever they first see and assumed my protestations of innocence were simply backpedaling and covering on my part.