On going quiet and transparency in the design process
Roger has challenged us to be transparent as we design SQL Server Data Services. He has urged us couple of times to follow the process that the ADO.Net Data Services team has followed. First let me assert again that we are all in favor of an open process that gets the community and experts who want to provide guidance involved. Second I have seen the benefits of the open and transparent design process during my XML days and prior to that my open source days. So personally I am committed to being open and transparent.
Having said that, we are currently working under several constraints. SQL Server Data Services is only one part of a very broad and deep services initiative which will only come to full light at the upcoming PDC. While we want to be open and transparent, we want to make sure we do not disclose anything inadvertently. This limits the degrees of freedom we have when we discuss features we want to put in and designs for those features. I am very hopeful that post PDC, we will be progressively be more open about our features and design.
Regarding going quiet between sprints - this is the result of 2 separate issues. One our team was quite small till about March of this year. As the team has grown, we have lot of new people who are upto their eyeballs catching up and getting up the steep unlearning and learning curves of transitioning from software to a services mindset. This leaves us with very little bandwidth especially during sprints to engage in deep discussions. Second, this has been a very busy year starting with MIX, TechEd, Worldwide Partner Conference, TechReady and now PDC and TechEd EMEA for the team. To top it all, summers are usually slow time in Redmond as people tend to take their vacations during this time of the year. I was out of the country for 2 weeks with no access to cell phones or email. I am officially still on vacation. But this is an important topic of discussion in the forums and in the blog and I appreciate your concern. Just wanted to shoot this out to alleviate your concerns and request for some patience. PDC is only 2 months away and I urge that you all attend PDC and get the full scope of what is cooking, meet all the key people, share your concerns and ideas about software and services. This is a big wave and we cannot ride it without you. I promise it will be a fun, exciting and profitable ride for all of us.
