You probably have noticed that I haven’t blogged all that much these days. Part of the reason has been taking on way too many projects/speaking engagements/writing projects etc. I am generally proud of all of these things, but the most project that I am probably the most proud of is the MVP Deep Dives 2 book.  The project was helmed by the one and only Kalen Delaney, whom I have always admired for many reasons. Working with her on the project has been awesome, even when she had to crack the whip on us pokey editors.

The other editors are a group of names that, let’s face it, if you have heard of me, you have heard of them and probably long before me (well, unless you are a family member of mine!) Greg Low who rules www.sqldownunder.com), Brad McGehee the smiling face of many Red Gate ads and blogger at http://www.bradmcgehee.com/, Paul Nielsen, writer of the SQL Server Bible series until 2008 and a good friend of mine who loves database design like I do and Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp of SQLSkills fame. It is an honor to be even mentioned along with these names.

You see the table of contents and purchase the book here: http://www.manning.com/delaney/. Just like last time, the book starts out with a section on Architecture, edited by me. It is the smallest section, which is probably to be expected. The 6 chapters in Architecture focus on the softer topics, including constraints/uniqueness, storage, generalization of designs, and general characteristics of designs.  I hope you like it, but one thing that is excellent about a book like this is that there are 60 chapters with something for everyone.

If you are going to be at SQLPASS, there is scheduled to be a good number of books for purchase there, and we will have a mass signing again. I always feel funny about signing books, but the book signing was a lot of fun last time.  The charity for this book is Operation Smile (http://www.operationsmile.org/). All author and editor proceeds will go to them. Last time we raised well into a 5 digit sum for War Child, so it isn’t chicken feed at the least.

One last note, I should note that over the project I lost an author due to his time commitments and some difficultly with the size of the chapter. I feel bad that we couldn’t work it out and I hope that his material (that was really good in its original form, though far too large for this format, and when we cut it down it just couldn’t be saved. The terrible part of being an editor is occasionally having to make a hard decision. In any case, this person’s writing, reasoning, etc were all good and if I see it posted later I will link to it for you.