Sunday, February 26, 2006

PL/sql Experts Determined to Give their Expertise -- ???

I am distributing this idea out into the world of PL/SQL developers. Everything about it, including the name, acronym, structure, etc., is open to discussion. Please let me know what you think and if you would be interested in participating. Thanks!

PLEDGE -PL/sql Experts Determined to Give their Expertise

Let's face it: not all developers are equal. We have widely varied levels of skill, experience and communications abilities. Any such group of professionals has a tiny subset of members who are perceived as the "elders" (aka, gurus, experts, etc.) -- and age has little to do with this status. I feel strongly that those of us in the PL/SQL world who are deeply experienced should come together to make our contributions more visible and widely available to the worldwide PL/SQL community.

Disclosure: I am especially desirous of a group like this, and will benefit greatly from it, because I cannot possibly answer all the questions that come my way (either because my time is limited or the question involves how PL/SQL code interacts with technologies like XML or Java, about which I have little experience). I would like to formalize the group of people I can turn to, to assist me in such matters. But I certainly don't want to limit it just to helping me answer my questions.

What is PLEDGE?

PLEDGE is (would be) a group of highly experienced PL/SQL developers who are committed to sharing their knowledge and code with others, at no cost.

I bet you are already thinking one or more of the following:
  • Should PLEDGE be a part of IOUG?
  • Should PLEDGE be or is it the same as a PL/SQL SIG?
My feeling is that PLEDGE is different from a SIG. It is primarily/fundamentally a close-knit fellowship of experts, not an enormous membership community. It functions to provide high quality, free resources to the worldwide PL/SQL community.

As to whether it should be a part of IOUG, I don't have strong feelings about that right now. See my comments in the section titled Resources below. I am not sure that this would be consistent with an IOUG entity.

How would PLEDGE work?

Here are some initial thoughts/guidelines...

1. PLEDGE has members and guests.

2. A PLEDGE member is a PL/SQL expert who has agreed to contribute her or his time/effort to improve the skills, productivity and code quality of the worldwide PL/SQL community.

3. A PLEDGE guest is a developer who has registered with PLEDGE so as to take advantage of the resources offered by PLEDGE, participate in forums and so on.

4. There is no cost associated with any level of participation in PLEDGE.

5. A PLEDGE member or user can post a challenge/requirement to PLEDGE, and then a member can volunteer to implement/guide/answer that challenge.

6. All code that is posted on the PLEDGE website needs to be documented, tested and testable (preferably with a Qute harness; check out www.unit-test.com for my latest and greatest product/concept).

Resources needed

This community needs to be supported by commercial vendors who are committed to the Oracle space. I do not believe that we can make it work the way it should with only volunteer time contributed, though it is certainly a possibility....

I do believe that any number of vendors could provide a base of support, including Quest and Oracle.

Areas of expertise

We need general PL/SQL pros, but also people who have specialized in various areas of technology that commonly connect to PL/SQL, including but not limited to:

  • Java-PL/SQL interface
  • .Net-PL/SQL interface
  • VB-PL/SQL interface
  • Using XML in PL/SQL
  • Oracle Applications and PL/SQL
  • Object-Oriented development with PL/SQL
So let me know what you think of PLEDGE!

3 comments:

Steven Feuerstein said...

Thanks, Tharg, you raise an excellent point. But I see PLEDGE as being quite different from a discussion forum. It would *not* offer discussions or threads on various topics. Instead, it offers discrete, tested, trusted, general resources that are created by experts. These resources would generally then be available for use by anyone. If the author wanted to provide additional documentation/support, that would be entirely up to them. Over time, we would develop an extensive library of PL/SQL programs and other code elements for the community.

Steven Feuerstein said...

A PL/SQL programmer sent these thoughts to me, and I thought I would post them here:

Steven,

I think PLEDGE is a nice idea.

Questions I have about it:

* What's the motivation to be a member/expert? Fame? Glory? Future job offers? :-)

* I think the number of Guests will quickly totally outnumber and overwhelm the Members/Experts, causing the experts to dive for cover back in their own work.

* I think there are enough Oracle resources out there that most of this need for help is getting met. You've probably know more of these than I do, but I'm thinking of things like MetaLink, AskTom, Expert-Exchange, etc.

Steven Feuerstein said...

More comments from a PL/SQL developer:

Great idea! But I wouldn’t have levels like “member” and “guest”. The problem is that some of us have expertise in certain areas, but we don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be an expert overall.

I’d prefer to go with the commonly used forum ratings based on the number of posts a person makes. If a person makes a lot of posts its probably because he answers a lot of questions, and that is valuable to the community regardless of his specific skill set.

Statistically newbies, or inexperienced people, don’t make a lot of posts, so the ranking based on # of posts is often somewhat correct to hint at a person’s skill level.