July 5, 2011 at 7:19 am
To the Editorial staff:
I have a simple request, ( and at the risk of sounding selfish ), I just have to put it out there: Is it possible that the focus of future articles, could somehow be focused on a more in-depth explanation of whatever the subject is?
I mean, after about 5 years of subscription to this news magazine, the primary focus is for articles aimed at Newbies, which, I am willing to bet, that more experienced DBAs scoff at. Even first-year, or second-year DBAs, or Newbies get this info from books, BOL, etc., already, and QotD doesn't cut it, buddy!
I don't know anything about running news magazines, but it seems obvious that a larger part of your audience is more advanced that these "Introductory" articles. The Briefcase feature is probably the only reason DBAs use this news magazine.
Relational Database is not rocket science, if it ever was, and there are new converts coming into the field, but, what about the bulk of your audience? Now, I am not a Writer, ( so stop looking for articles from people like me ), the MVPs in the Blogs could be a good place to start.
I am not saying I know everything about databases, but, every time I see an article about "an introduction to Indexes", it makes me want to puke. I feel like I need a shower every time I read a "New" article about some familiar-sounding topic, and, hoping for something to add to my vocabulary, my knowledge-base, I am always disappointed, because, it stops short, of any new or challenging info.
Like I said, I don't know anything about running a News magazine, and, to me, and ( I know I cannot be the only DBA with this concern ), but, you risk relevance.
July 5, 2011 at 7:32 am
I'm not one of the editors, but this site publishes what volunteers write and submit. You can request articles (there's a forum specifically for that), but you can't force people to write something. The authors here aren't on the SSC staff or anything.
A lot of introductory stuff is written because there's a huge demand for it and they're popular. There are lots of 'involuntary' DBAs trying to get a grip on what they are doing.
I still learn stuff from introductory articles, especially ones on stuff I don't get to work with often (extended events, DB mirroring and the like) so just because an article is introductory shouldn't turn you off, there could be gems in it.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
July 5, 2011 at 8:05 am
GilaMonster (7/5/2011)
I'm not one of the editors, but this site publishes what volunteers write and submit. You can request articles (there's a forum specifically for that), but you can't force people to write something. The authors here aren't on the SSC staff or anything.A lot of introductory stuff is written because there's a huge demand for it and they're popular. There are lots of 'involuntary' DBAs trying to get a grip on what they are doing.
I still learn stuff from introductory articles, especially ones on stuff I don't get to work with often (extended events, DB mirroring and the like) so just because an article is introductory shouldn't turn you off, there could be gems in it.
+1
Been reading it since 2000 and still learn stuff, see it done differently, get a view from a different perspective (always surprised how limited my scope of usage of SQL Server is at times) so I am thankful for all that is written.
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
July 5, 2011 at 8:20 am
Winston Daley-344648 (7/5/2011)
but, every time I see an article about "an introduction to Indexes",
p.s. I hope that's not my 'Introduction to Indexes' article you're talking about... 😉 🙂
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
July 5, 2011 at 9:40 am
I guess my take on it would be: What do you want for in-depth? Are there subjects you'd like to see, possibly authors you'd like to see them by?
But keep in mind that real depth doesn't lend itself well to articles on a website. Real depth is conferences and books. The Stairways stuff starts shallow and moves to greater depth in a series of articles (check the navigation pannel to the left for those). Does that do what you need?
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
July 5, 2011 at 11:41 am
Something else to throw out there. These articles aren't exactly well funded. I make about a buck an hour for my articles here, and those aren't even tech articles. They're more a 'thank you, have a couple of beers on us' type of payment.
So, if you want that kind of indepth treatment on subjects, you'd be looking at a paysite that can afford to pay their article writers more closely to those of their real magazine... which is kinda what that's there for, really.
Articles here also target a specific length, I think it's about 10-20 minutes of reading, roughly, each. A deep article would require a very large piece for examples, samples, and in depth discussions. These are no longer articles at that point, but book chapters.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
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July 5, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Craig Farrell (7/5/2011)
Something else to throw out there. These articles aren't exactly well funded. I make about a buck an hour for my articles here, and those aren't even tech articles. They're more a 'thank you, have a couple of beers on us' type of payment.So, if you want that kind of indepth treatment on subjects, you'd be looking at a paysite that can afford to pay their article writers more closely to those of their real magazine... which is kinda what that's there for, really.
Articles here also target a specific length, I think it's about 10-20 minutes of reading, roughly, each. A deep article would require a very large piece for examples, samples, and in depth discussions. These are no longer articles at that point, but book chapters.
Craig, are you talking about Jeff's articles now?
Wayne
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008
Author - SQL Server T-SQL Recipes
July 5, 2011 at 12:41 pm
WayneS (7/5/2011)
Craig Farrell (7/5/2011)
Something else to throw out there. These articles aren't exactly well funded. I make about a buck an hour for my articles here, and those aren't even tech articles. They're more a 'thank you, have a couple of beers on us' type of payment.So, if you want that kind of indepth treatment on subjects, you'd be looking at a paysite that can afford to pay their article writers more closely to those of their real magazine... which is kinda what that's there for, really.
Articles here also target a specific length, I think it's about 10-20 minutes of reading, roughly, each. A deep article would require a very large piece for examples, samples, and in depth discussions. These are no longer articles at that point, but book chapters.
Craig, are you talking about Jeff's articles now?
*whistles innocently*
Unless you sit down and read all the code that's attached to his articles, even his read in 10-20 minutes in most cases. If you start digging deep, however, that's another story.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
Twitter: @AnyWayDBA
July 5, 2011 at 1:38 pm
The 10-20 minute thing is why I had to split my Audit Logs article in two.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
July 5, 2011 at 2:24 pm
Gail & others - Its not so much that I am picking on anyone or their article(s) in particular, and yes, I do admit that there are gems in each one, and I know some of you spend quality time helping people, to me, you are the "First Responders", of SSC.
Of course, when I just signed up, like, 5 years ago, it was the best site to me, but as knowledge & experiences grow, it ( SSC ) just stays there, sitting in limbo, a good place to hold scripts & articles in the Briefcase, for future use.
But, by it ( SSC ) being a free site, I guess we should tolerate it. The quandary, for me, at least is, since its free, whats the point of cancelling the subscription ... ? 😎
I just think that with so many skilled subscribers, DBAs & Developers here, we don't get to see their full potential.
*Golf comes to mind*
If Tiger Woods had the challenges he so desperately needed, how different would things have been, for him today?
Like I said, I just had to put it out there ...:Whistling:
July 5, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Winston Daley-344648 (7/5/2011)
Of course, when I just signed up, like, 5 years ago, it was the best site to me, but as knowledge & experiences grow, it ( SSC ) just stays there, sitting in limbo, a good place to hold scripts & articles in the Briefcase, for future use.
If you can persuade people to write advanced stuff, great, but the thing is it's purely a volunteer effort and to be brutally honest, Steve doesn't pay enough to really justify spending a couple of weeks writing, testing and editing deep technical stuff on a regular basis.
(Note, that's not an attack on Steve, this is a free site so he doesn't have huge budgets to pay authors from)
But, by it ( SSC ) being a free site, I guess we should tolerate it. The quandary, for me, at least is, since its free, whats the point of cancelling the subscription ... ? 😎
I know Steve's very happy to give refunds.... :hehe:
Bear in mind there are other places for deep technical stuff. SQLMag (kinda), Simple Talk does publish more comprehensive stuff, the technet articles.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
July 5, 2011 at 2:42 pm
What you're seeing is the usual point of diminishing returns.
For most people, the greatest returns from a site like SSC will start with asking for specific help on specific questions. After that, it will migrate to reading general articles at a beginning level. After that, it moves to more advanced articles, true, but it also moves to answering questions for others.
You will miss out on most of the benefit of a site like this if you don't modify your participation from incoming to outgoing.
That may be counter-intuitive in a way, so let me expand on it. In 2000, I was a salesperson with some marketing and PR functions, and I had only a vague idea of what a "database" was, though I'd been a computer hobbyist and a "power user" since the mid-70s. I ended up being in charge of a database of customers and orders, because I created one for my own use. Long-story-short, I ended up as a DBA. At first, I had a LOT of questions, even about basic things like "why the heck do they call these things 'relational'?" I needed specific answers to specific problems, and I got them. Reading even beginning-level articles led to more confusion than help, because of the terminology and a lot of assumptions about "you already know what a table is for, and what the data types mean, so here's my article on Running Totals". After a while like that, and a LOT of desperate reading in beginning books that helped but only slowly, I eventually reached a point where I could digest a beginner article and learn from it. So I did. And my number of questions for others diminished over time as I learned enough to be able to find answers on my own. A few years later, I reached a point of being able to answer more forum questions than I was asking. A bit later, I wrote some articles that people still find useful years later.
In the end, I spend a lot of time answering questions on forums like these. Do I do it because "I owe people for all the help I once received"? Heck no! Do I do it because I have some compulsive need to help people? Again, no. I answer questions on these forums because they force me to research issues I have never run into myself. I learn more by answering some of these questions, than I would ever by reading a dozen books or articles. Especially since some of the questions are so truly bizzare that no author in his right mind would ever write a chapter/article on them. Researching the answers I give, getting corrected by others, getting my answers improved by others, even disagreeing with people over "the best answer", all expand my knowledge. Even the questions I can answer without a second of research help keep existing knowledge sharp and ready-to-use.
Perhaps what you're looking at is the point in your evolution as an SQL DBA where you need to move from "learning by asking/reading" and start moving towards "learning by answering/writing".
The human mind works that way. Any expert in any field either makes that same evolution, or stagnates and becomes increasingly obsolete.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
July 5, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Winston Daley-344648 (7/5/2011)
I just think that with so many skilled subscribers, DBAs & Developers here, we don't get to see their full potential.
While I agree with Gus' perception above, about the transition, this comment in particular I feel needs a response.
You're right, you don't. I get paid to do that, and I get paid very well to do that. I don't mind giving it away for free on occassion when a particular issue in the forums strikes my fancy, but it's certainly not worth doing white paper level research for an article here. Even if I was willing to do that, I'd make sure it was branded to my name, not SSC's.
Not that I don't spend time on my articles, but even my non-technical articles take a few weeks to properly write, then a few more weeks for re-write, edit, re-edit, clarify, clean, cleanse, and we STILL get a few grammatical errors that wander by without anyone noticing. I can only imagine how long someone like Jeff or Gail spends on their 'low-end' articles testing code, retesting, confirming results and reconfirming in different environments, and then writing the text and pushing all that through editing.
Now, is that really worth it at the high end tech level for a free site, where each inch of code needs to get verified on multiple versions, checked for settings, etc etc? Yeaaaah, no, not really. They sell that kind of stuff in books.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
Twitter: @AnyWayDBA
July 5, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Winston,
Fair points, and I do think that we have shifted slightly this year to more beginner articles with the Stairways, and some of the contributions sent in, but if I look over the list of recent articles, what would you like to be more in depth?
"Optimizing a cursor based routine – Part 2" may be easy for some, but there are many people that might be good at doing admin stuff, or a whiz in SSIS that don't know how/why they might clean up a cursor.
"Reporting Services: Adding extra columns / rows to a matrix" might be seen as a more complex topic. This isn't something that a person starting with SSRS, or even in the first 6 months might need to do.
"XLSExport: A CLR procedure to export proc results to Excel" seems complex to me, someone that hasn't been doing CLR work in production. That is more in depth than most articles, and includes topics that I would expect to be complex for most DBAs. However if you were a developer DBA, that might seem easy.
I think that "Slowly changing dimensions using T-SQL MERGE" is an advanced topic.
I don't mean to disagree with you as in between those articles we've had some simple indexing articles, some fairly simple T-SQL ones, and Tom's normalization one. I will try to keep an eye on finding a few more advanced articles, and I do call for some at times, or ask people to write them.
Part of the issue is that what is advanced to one person, might be simple to another. Another issue is that we aim for real world articles. I don't like seeing theoretical articles, and a number of our published works come from a forum post where I ask someone to describe in more detail what they're doing in their shop. We look for "effective" articles more than highly technical, Paul White blog post internals ones.
The other issue, and I would guess this is where you are, is that once you reach some level in your career where you understand most of how SQL works, and can likely guess how other parts of it work, most articles won't teach you much. As Gus mentioned, you might need to look in other places for details. We never will publish a lot of 400 level content, and to be fair, most conferences don't do a lot of 400 level stuff because the audience wanting it is small. Most people on the curve of knowledge need 200-300 level stuff.
If there is something specific you'd like to see, please feel free to drop a note here: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Forum2824-1.aspx
One suggestion per thread, and I'll see what I can do. I have paid more for some articles that require more work, but writing deep technical stuff isn't really about $$. It's because you want to share, and there are relatively few people with the knowledge, and time, that want to do so.
July 5, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/5/2011)
One suggestion per thread, and I'll see what I can do. I have paid more for some articles that require more work, but writing deep technical stuff isn't really about $$. It's because you want to share, and there are relatively few people with the knowledge, and time, that want to do so.
There's also the work involved can interfere with other things, thus it really just isn't worth it unless your'e doing the research for something else and you accidentally tripped on something article-worthy. I've actually got one of those now. For some of that heavy-duty, high-end stuff it's almost a full time job for a few weeks to create the article and sample code, nevermind the research on everything someone always feels the need to try to call you out or embarass you on in a game of one-upmanship. There always seems to be one of those jokers hiding in the forum behind every high end article I've seen so far.
So, sorry if it looked like I was picking on you there, Steve. I feel SSC has the right balance, a few beers as a thanks and some exposure of the name of the person in a place where they can share. I just don't feel this place is the right location to try to do that level of work, neither monitarily nor time-wise, unless it kind of fell into the author's lap.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
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