Lloyd

Thanks! Yes, I use Lulu because the volumes are so small and since they are
US based - as is most of the readership - they can dispatch directly to the
client rather than my having to dispatch them from here. The downside is the
lead time for production.

But 'windbag' or not Tony [grin], don't underestimate the amount of work
required to create these - they take literally months of effort and if I
were looking on a purely commercial basis they would be a non-starter for
that reason. I write the books because I enjoy it, and I because I love this
technology. The sales are a bonus.

BUT it does lead into another soap box of mine: if you were searching for a
book on this technology, what do you search under? The fact that there are
no generic names for this market space, other than the 'multivalue' name
that only participants understand, is one of my pet hates. Everyone
understands the name SQL even though different variants are largely
incompatible. Yet we can't even agree on one, single, sensible name for our
query language: it's even different between the two U2 products!

So if, for example, you wanted a book on the query language, are you looking
under: Retrieve, UniQuery, AQL, ACCESS, ENGLISH, INFORM, JQL ... Yes it's
fine to have all these trademarked variants - just like TSQL and SQL*PLUS -
but the fact that after all these years the vendors still cannot bash their
heads together to come up with a single, overarching and generic term just
frustrates the h*ll of out me.

And the other pieces are no better (BASIC, UniBasic, UniVerse Basic,
DATABASIC, DATA/BASIC, PROC or PROVERB ...)

I've raised this with the various vendors several times over the years, and
it has always falled on deaf ears. But until we can start to just refer to
our technology sensibly, it is always going to be an uphill struggle
reaching beyond our community boundaries.


Brian
 

-----Original Message-----
From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org
[mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Lloyd Cottrell
Sent: 23 March 2010 3:01 AM
To: U2 Users List
Subject: Re: [U2] Pick Pocket Guide

I would talk to Brian Leach about how he publishes his.  If I'm not mistaken
they are printed on demand.  I have bought a few from him, and they are very
good quality.
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