Unfortunatelly, seems not all get your answers in documentation, neither WebPTS, neither in mailing lists. It's not MaxDB exclusivity. Several open source projects has poor documentation, specially in infra-structure docs.
IMHO, the MaxDB manuals are fine, since I already have experience with other large databases (like MS SQL, Oracle, DB2 and so on). Of course, users of desktop and ISAM databases (Access, MySQL, Dataflex, and others) will need some background (I think some books about relational databases could give the startup needed). Probably a "Getting Started Guide with Relational Databases using MaxDB" should be written in the future to help starters. Commercial databases always come with different level of guides directed to specific audiences. I think docs is fundamental as mailing lists is. But the most important thing in a open source project is give feedback to the users that are extensivelly using the software (and facing the real bugs). Whenever a project leave users without answers (at last a "we will check"), it get loosing credibility. I've seen a lot of people posting questions and never getting answers. Another way to loose credibility in open source projects is not accepting community critics when anything is going wrong - at least, the constructive ones (it's not SapDB/MaxDB team case). Open source is based on community efforts. Look the case of projects like NetBeans, Eclipse and others. They have developers mailing lists to discuss development of the projects, and user mailing lists where users help other users, they allow community people to enter and discuss the future, take allow vote for bugs resolution priorities, and so on. A recent sample about the community influence in NetBeans project was the change of the release plans of 4.0, including a 3.6 release with features asked by the community. Even Sun, in Java project, that isn't open source, give the community ways to report and vote for the bugs. I think MaxDB is going very well as product. Just a little more attention to the small bugs that popup everywhere (sometimes fixing something old and boring is more important than feature X or Y, even if X or Y is amazing and bright). Maybe a place where the community can report the bugs, and vote for them. As far as I can see, MaxDB is the only open source database with stability and features to face commercial ones. Richter -- MaxDB Discussion Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/maxdb To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
