I was browsing the March 2009 issue of Visual Studio Magazine today and found that it's changing again. It's been integrated with the Redmond Developer News, VSM editor Patrick Meader is gone, and things will continue as part VSM part RDN. 40 pages this issue, with a 6 or 7 page special ad section in the middle. Seems to be a lot more content online than in the print version, probably because the print subscriptions are free. Free is good, but being the hard to please consumer it still seems like I'm not getting enough value for my money!

Coming not long after Dr Dobbs stopped their print version the slow death of the tech magazine market continues. There are still a few on the shelf at the book store and PC World seems to be surviving (so far), but the rest are getting thinner and thinner and I expect to see quite a few more cease printing by the end of the year.

Sadly I think it's us that is causing a lot of it. More and more people in our profession seem to be adopting the attitude that why get it in print if I can get it online. It is nice to have options, and it's definitely nice to find something in a search and not have to go digging through back issues looking for 'something you saw'. Yet the loss is portability and packaging. I keep a couple magazines in my bag to read when I end up having a few minutes to kill waiting on someone for lunch or a meeting (right now it's Entrepreneur and Scientific Amerian Earth 3.0). Could I take out the laptop, plug in the cell card, and browse online? Maybe, but most of the time I just don't want to bother. Maybe the Kindle fixes this, but can you bend over the corners of pages on the Kindle?

To me it's part of the downside of e-commerce that Steve Jones discusses and I don't know if we'll see the true value of the loss until too late. Can we change it? The free market is speaking and businesses are reacting, so my guess is no.....but if you want to try, I'd suggest revisiting the magazines you enjoy and consider a subscription or a renewal - if no one is interested, it's an easy decision for them to stop printing.

Of course I'm not sure if this is a case of being slow to adapt, or just hating to adapt - for me that is!

The Jan 2008 issue of Software Test & Performance Magazine  (available as free PDF download, you can also download back issues through 2004) has an article called 'Gauging Performance in the Absence of Metrics' that I found interesting. From a SQL perspective it's a good read because it talks about how you decide what is fast enough and it takes into account there are a lot of pieces vying for time; UI, network, database. It also talks about setting goals for concurrency and how it's possible to acheive the goal but still not hit the mark because of the way the goal is described.

To some degree it's all in how you write the requirements (tests)! It's not often we (DBA's) get a real definition of how fast anything needs to be, in practice we just try to make everything fun fast! Not the worst strategy, but all tuning is about trade offs and having some real values to hit would help us assess the trade offs in formal fashion. If nothing else this is an interesting view into the world of the tester and I suspect we all agree that we could stand to improve our testing.

First time I've noticed this being offered, saw it posted on the Orlando .Net Users Group (ONETUG) site. Sign up is easy enough, just one page to register and they also offer a digital edition for those who prefer paperless. Register for your subscription, they've had some good LINQ content and the occasional SQL article.

I don't have a URL handy for it, but in the latest print issue of PC Mag they announced changing to 12 issues a year compared to the 22 issues a year it has been forever. I've been reading PC Mag since 1988 and it's been sad to see the exodus of so many long term columnists and the change/rechange in focus as they try to find their way. Not just them of course, technical magazines in general continue to shrink and decline more than most magazine segments. I suspect that is because more than the other segments the IT professional increasingly wants their information available online and eschews paper.

I think it's our loss. Web reading just doesn't match print, even when web contented is printed via the nearest laser. It's good to read something that occasionally isn't 100% on topic but turns out to be interesting and useful anyway, and the ads seem more useful if less entertaining. Have to wonder if we'll see a similar decline in other segments over the next 10-20 years?

You may not think of DDJ for database info and I'll admit that what they do cover is often a bit off the path most of us SQL Server people follow, but they do have some interesting content that I like because it does take me past my normal SQL Server stuff. They also occasionaly feature database articles/discussions and that prompts todays note. They have a Databases section but in includes articles on non database topics. For example, today they have a article about Real Basic - huh?

I don't know if Steve includes their stuff in Database Weekly or not, but if you want to take a look visit http://www.drdobbs.com/database/?cid=vnav or pick up their feed at http://www.drdobbs.com/rss/database_news.xml.

I was just reading the October 2007 issue and they have done what magazines are apt to do; redesign themselves to take a fresher approach. Cynically I'm not sure this is anything except billable time for the graphics and layout team, but this time it does look like they are adjusting their formula to include more entry level articles and more variety. It also may be that Mike Otey is no longer the editor - hard to tell, but he didn't write the editorial this time and I'm not sure he's ever missed a month. I don't know him but I've enjoyed his comments over the years. They also allude to a 'new user base' due to things like SharePoint, WSUS, etc - it will be interesting to see if the balance tips too far the other way from the previous bias towards more high end articles.

We'll see how it turns out, but for now I still recommend adding it to your reading list, along with The SQL Server Standard of course, even if the site hasn't been updated lately!