After SQL-99, What’s Next?

As Hakan mentioned previously, the full text of SQL-99 Complete, Really by Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer, is now in the AskMonty.org Knowledgebase. Importing the text and formatting it for the Knowledgebase was a major project and I’m glad that it’s done.

Having the full text of this book freely available is a great thing for anyone who uses SQL because the book is about the SQL-99 standard and not about any particular database implementation. They do talk about different implementations, but those sections are clearly marked as such, and serve as examples of  how some databases implement (or diverge from) the standard.

The question now is: What’s next? Both for the SQL-99 section, and for the Knowledgebase in general?

First, we want to integrate the SQL-99 text into the rest of the Knowledgebase. At present, it is largely isolated from the other main section (the MariaDB section). We’ll start by cross-linking between SQL-99 and MariaDB articles. Going forward we will incorporate the SQL-99 text into new and existing MariaDB-related articles, where appropriate.

Beyond SQL-99, we also want to grow the Knowledgebase into a repository of all sorts of database-related information. To that end, we’re on the lookout for more ready-made content to add to the Knowledgebase. If you own or control the rights to a database-related book, and would like to see it added, please contact us. We’re even willing to purchase the rights, if necessary. Bonus points if the book is directly about MariaDB or MySQL, but we’re also interested in other databases.

Speaking of the Knowledgebase, we just rolled out some updates to make it easier for anyone who wants to to participate in creating and editing content to get started. If you’d like to help out, please do! If you have questions on how to get started you can almost always find me and other Knowledgebase admins in #maria on Freenode (my Freenode nick is dbart) or you can join the maria-docs mailing list and ask there.