Keeping Current

In all of my books, I've tried to provide up-to-the-moment information, but this is really a daunting task, as Microsoft is constantly updating, fixing, and tuning the released products. It's as if they don't really have a long-term plan of how we're supposed to write our applications. What's perfectly suitable today is passé, discouraged or dropped, or hidden or deprecated tomorrow. I don't see an end to this constant cycle of early release, repair, and planned obsolescence as Microsoft attempts to maximize their profits by forcing development shops (and users) to buy their latest whiz-bang versions. It seems there is never enough time to build a product that include the features ordinary developers need and (sadly) never enough time to fix it once it ships.

As an author, I'm also faced with a dilemma. At this point in time (April 2006), I have over 750 pages of original content sitting on my hard-drive. I can't show it to anyone until the book gets into print. Given that the useful lifetime of technical content is approaching the duration of a phosphorus flashbulb, we (the publishers and I) have to figure out a new way to get current content into your hands more quickly. The other problem I'm faced with is scope. Frankly, I would have liked to include far more in-depth information on many other related subjects, like ASP development issues, security, deployment, SQL Trace, the profiler, and others. I would also like to discuss the new DLINQ and other emerging (and experimental) data access technologies to be released with the next version of Visual Studio (Orcas). I found that this was simply impossible to accomplish when working virtually alone.

To address these problems, I'm planning to write and publish (one way or another) a set of EBooks on related subjectsyou'll see references to these as you read. Ironically, the first EBook might be available before the first printed copiesit seems to take about five months to get a book from draft to paper nowadaystime enough for Microsoft to reinvent the entire tools suite. EBooks are generally shorter than paper books (Addison-Wesley even calls them "shorts")usually just a single chapter or sectionso they are far easier to write, edit, and distribute. Unlike paper books, EBooks can also contain full-color illustrations and provide links to online animations, Camtasia videos, or other supplementary content.

Paper-based book and magazine publishers are trying to figure out how to best market and sell EBooks, but it remains to be seen if they have the vision and courage to transition away from their traditional printing and distribution paradigms. The problem we all face with EBooks is piracy. All too often, as soon as an EBook is published, those who would cheat the system put the content on the Internet. This robs authors and publishers of their motivation to publish, and everyone suffers as a result. Several months' work can be flushed away in an instant. Until this problem is solved, I don't expect many publishers will fully explore this unchartered territory. I'm going to experiment with a few EBooks to see how well they are received and whether the rumors about piracy are true. My first will be on SQL Server Everywhereif it's still called that by the time you read this.