Rob Paller A blog about databases, business intelligence, and an outlet for my inner geek

Engaging the Teradata Community

If you are looking for Teradata developer or DBA resources, you are not going to find an equivalent to SQLServerPedia yet. The Teradata developers and DBA's aren't found tweeting about join indexes, DBQL, or fallback, nor are they  blogging about multi-value compression, UDFs, or Teradata Active System Management (TASM) on a regular basis. That doesn't mean the community doesn't exist you just have to know where to find it and how to engage it.

Finding the pieces...

The TeradataForum

The TeradataForum has been around for over a decade now. However it is not a traditional forum, it is an independently operated, semi-moderated listserv that is maintained by John Hall.  A listserv is a lot like a party line in your Inbox. You can listen in and talk when you feel the need. However, there are some drawbacks in that conversations can't be easily taken offline as email addresses were stripped before the message goes out on the listserv. The website for the TeradataForum provides a collection of sample threads, archive of threads by year, and the ability to search the listserv via Google. All in all, it is a great resource that has been serving the community well for quite some time.

Teradata Forums

A few years back Teradata established the Teradata Forums, a traditional discussion forum, for Teradata users to congregate and discuss all things Teradata. It currently boasts over 8,000 users discussing over 4,500 topics. The Teradata Forums are a great place for those who would rather not participate in a listserv to engage the Teradata community when they have a problem or to give back to the community when they have a spare minute to answer some questions.

Teradata Developer Exchange

Announced just this summer, the Teradata Developer Exchange is the latest step toward building a stronger community for Teradata developers and DBA's. Here you will find articles submitting by some of Teradata's own brightest employees on topics ranging from Priority Scheduler, Statistics, Viewpoint, and UDF development. There is also a forum here as well that allows community members to discuss many of the same topics that are discussed on the Teradata Forums without having to leave the Developer Exchange to ask or answer a question. There is also a section here to download some of the things that may be useful to developers like an Eclipse plug-in or the recently released alpha version of SQL Assistant Java Edition.

TeradataQuestions

TeradataQuestions is the most recent member of the Teradata Community. TeradataQuestions is an independently run forum based on the Stack Overflow Knowledge Exchange. (The best example of this can be seen at StackOverflow.)  StackOverflow has become wildly successful in part because the community not only provides answers to the questions but they have the ability to flag the best answer and also vote on the question or the answers within the question. Participation in the community earns you reputation points and badges. Is there better way to encourage community involvement and self policing than by allowing your input to be voted up or down by your peers?

Get involved

The Teradata developer and DBA community is flourishing. You just have to know where the pieces are and figure out which pieces fit the missing pieces that make up your involvement in the community.  How are you engaging the Teradata developer and DBA community? Let me know in the comments...