SQLServerPedia
The official launch of the SQLServerPedia wiki is about to take place. This will happen during the PASS Summit in Seattle the week of November 16th. However there is no better time than the present to spread the word on this new resource for Microsoft SQL Server information and problem-resolution. Brent Ozar, SQL Impresario and all around Good-Guy is Editor-In-Chief and approached me about a month or so ago about being the Editor of the DBA content for the site. I asked him what my annual salary would be and if I would have a staff of interns and a private jet. I also told him I’d do it if he would greet me with a bowl of yellow M&Ms when I stepped off the tarmac in Seattle next week. Well, okay, I would have said those things if he had not preempted the discussion with “It doesn’t pay anything.”
He drove a hard bargain, but in the end I was able to get him to throw in a free drink in Seattle. He just doesn’t know it yet.
He was wrong though, it does pay. I am able to continue to find new ways to (hopefully) add value to the SQL Server community at-large. I often joke that Google is my Junior DBA. The resources available for SQL content on the inter webs is extensive, but there are only a select few that provide content that:
- Can be relied upon for consistent, accurate content
- Are free for use
- Do not require a login or registration process in order to see content
- Do not contain back and forth banter that you need to wade through to get your answers
SQLServerPedia is not meant to take the place or “edge-out” any other online resources, but to rather complement the existing resources in a user-friendly and competent manner.
Now for the sales pitch: this process we’re starting will not succeed without contributions from people like you. Granted, not everyone out there in the SQLSphere wants to be an author. However, you are all consumers of this information and no matter how smart the author is or how respectable of a resource he/she is, sometimes they just don’t get it right. That is where you can help as well. Call us out on it, whether formally on the SQLServerPedia wiki or by emailing me or any other the other editors. Heck, toss a comment out here telling me how we got it wrong and we’ll make right. It’s the only way for this to be a success and not just another exit on the Information Superhighway.