Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Just trying to help

Let me start by saying, and I know this is going to be hard to believe but here it goes anyhow; I don't know everything. Wheww.... That was harder than I thought and if it was that hard for me to say I can imagine it would be even harder for you to believe. The reason I post this is because there are people out there that go from blog to blog or post to post simply to disprove or argue with the person who has posted. Now don't get me wrong, I am completely fine with being wrong and I am completely open to other ways of thinking. What I am not open to is arguing for the sake of arguing. I am not a big fan of people who create nothing, but feel obliged to destroy what others are attempting to do. My advice would be that if you don't like what it is I am doing or what it is I have to say, then go and do it better. If yours is better than mine, then I will have to improve or lose readers. At that point we start all making each other better and the world is a better place. I know flaming is easier, but easier is rarely the better way. Except when it comes to data.

How was that for a segway(transition not scooter). My goal here is to put out information I come across that might help others. I encounter so much information on a daily basis that I couldn't think of a better way to communicate it. So my goal is simply publish links to things I think would be helpful and to comment on them. Occasionally I will publish something original, but only if I think it is of value. I have always admitted that I sometimes talk just to hear myself talk, but that doesn't apply to typing. So if someone has already said what I would like to convey, then I will let them speak for themselves.

I intend topics to cover all sorts and types of data. I am a database architect by trade and a data geek by nature. I believe he who has the data and can access it the fastest and clearest way wins. Wins what I don't know. Having said that, I also understand the possibility of data bloat. Too much data can be crippling and cumbersome so relevance of the data is also key. I think data is valuable when it gets you what you need when you need it but is even better when it you what you didn't know you needed before you knew you needed it. Say that ten times fast:)

I work with a bunch of very talented engineers who have taught me a lot, but I am not a programmer/developer so when things start to go down that road, my knowledge of the subject will decline in exponential proportion, but I will try and add what value I can. I encourage discussion of topics and welcome all comments providing the don't violate the don't be mean rule stated above. I didn't call it that up there and because I don't like to type I am not going all the way up four paragraphs to insert it. So hence forth all of the things I talked about that I didn't like is known as the mean rule. But I digress.

On with it then. One of the first things I encourage all of you to do is to get an account at http://sqlservercentral.com It is free, but you do have to fill out some stuff. There is a wealth of knowledge at this place and many of the links I post will take you here. You can also sign up for their email which blasts out the days published articles. Also, if any of you fancy yourself as writers, feel free to send in a submission. They pay $25 for an article. I have one published there so they obviously are not real stringent on requirements. I sent in a diatribe on why business logic shouldn't live in the database. In the message boards in the article I spent a lot of time arguing with a couple of people who's sole existence is dependent upon breaking the don't be mean rule. Hence the rule. In the end, I should have defined business logic which they confused with business rules. But again, I digress.

Some of the hottest topics in the data world have to do with SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) which is a fancy name for integration. We will touch on this from time to time along with the preponderance of trends in data warehousing and transactional databases. In addition, we will talk from time to time about unstructured data and it's role in the future. This is my favorite topic because I think that is where most of the innovation in the future will take place. Google anyone.

So to start here is http://www.utexas.edu/its/windows/database/datamodeling/index.html a great article from the University of Texas (hook 'em horns) on an introduction to data modeling. It is a nice site with good navigation and does a really nice job of boiling things down but not over explaining the obvious.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

segue

Anonymous said...

So is that the scooter or the transition :)