There's No Place Like the SQL Server Channel

Greetings,
"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

No, I'm not going to use this week's column to talk about the Wizard of Oz. But I realized that I spend a lot of time encouraging you to explore training and technical content all over the Web, and I rarely remind you about content you can find closer to home. I don't have to click my heels to get there, but a few twirls of my mouse's ruby red trackball send me to the SQL Server Magazine Web site, which places an amazing amount of content and information at your fingertips.

The magazine just completed a major overhaul of the site, so I encourage you to take a look at some of its significant layout and content changes. The biggest change is that the site combines the former SQL Server Magazine site and the former SQL Server channel into a new SQL Server channel that encompasses all SQL Server content from the entire Windows 2000 Magazine Network. You can access all of the network's SQL Server content from this channel regardless of whether the content (e.g., a how-to technical article, tip, or commentary) first appeared in SQL Server Magazine, SQL Server Magazine UPDATE, Windows 2000 Magazine, Security UPDATE, or any other Windows 2000 Magazine Network source. Nearly all the information you'll find on the site is specific to SQL Server. For example, if you click on User Groups in the left navigation bar, you'll see a list of SQL Server user groups. If you click on FAQs, you'll find an index of SQL Server-related FAQ articles by John Savill and Neil Pike.

What's the Windows 2000 Magazine Network? As you probably know, the same folks who bring you SQL Server Magazine also publish Windows 2000 Magazine as well as print newsletters and email newsletters. The Windows 2000 Magazine Network is simply a convenient way—organized by channel—to group and explore content from all the available resources. You'll find links to these other Windows 2000 Magazine Network channels on the SQL Server Magazine home page:

The SQL Server Magazine channel also gives you an easy way to search our organization's impressive SQL Server content. The new-and-improved search engine lets you search by topic, author, department, or issue in addition to keyword. The new SQL Server channel features a monthly "Focus" section that highlights content that falls under a particular topic. For example, the April Focus is "High Availability," so we pulled together a collection of articles, lab reports, commentaries, and columns that give you the best content we have about high availability in an easy-to-use format. You can find the current print magazine's table of contents and content by clicking on the issue focus topic under the SQL Server Magazine heading. Under the Keeping Up heading, you'll find links to Web-exclusive articles in the T-SQL Black Belt Exchange series and the monthly SQL Server MVP Tips series, a collection of practical SQL Server tips from the SQL Server Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), many of whom are SQL Server Magazine authors.

Check out the new and improved SQL Server channel, and tell us what you think. Send your comments to [email protected].

http://www.sqlmag.com