'Coram magnificos manifeste scalpere nolis
Torquendo digitos nares…'

Daniellis Becclesiensis c1200 AD

(meaning: Do not pick your nose in front of managers)

One of the delights of being Simple-Talk’s subeditor, under the watchful eye of Tony (sir), Anna and Simon, is to interact with our team of regular writers. When I use the word ‘Team’, I do so rather loosely, as writers come and go under the influences of the pressures of other work, or life events. By a strange coincidence we see the return of two regulars to the team after a gap of two years.

This issue welcomes back Amirthalingam Prasanna. Prasanna last wrote for us two years ago, and his five articles, with their clear tutorial style, have always been popular. He has returned with an update of his .NET Collection Management 08 December 2005  , called .NET Collection Management with C# We’d particularly like to cover Entity Framework on Simple-Talk, and we’re hoping that Prasanna will continue his output with a Cribsheet on the subject.

Richard Morris, being a professional journalist, does not suffer from the need for pencil-chewing and inspiration that affects most of our authors. He needs no encouragement: his articles are there, on time, every time, and are always stimulating to read. He writes best when he feels a genuine indignation about the subjects of his investigation, and in this article, where he investigates the troubling fact that almost all the British government IT contracts go to a handful of enormous multinational IT companies, the heat is palpable.

Phil Factor is not the most malleable of authors. Articles arrive with a quiet apology like ‘I know you wanted an article on maintenance plans, but this one just popped out.’ The article will be a mock pantomime, an elegy on indexes written in the style of Tennyson, or a treatise on the difficulties of running a project, written in the style of GK Chesterton. I have before me Phil’s translation of Machiavelli, rewritten very slightly and chillingly contemporary. Also Phil’s translation of the mediaeval (twelfth century) latin poem ‘Urbanus Magnus’, by Daniellis Becclesiensis, phrased for the modern office-workers, from which I have taken the quote that starts this Blog.. It means ‘Do not pick your nose in front of managers’. (literally ‘In front of grandees, do not openly evacuate your nostril by twisting your finger’). Other advice from the great work includes ‘if the wife of your manager attempts to seduce you, feign illness, as this is a no-win predicament for you.’. It is the first book of etiquette ever written in Western Europe.

Under Robyn’s restraining influence, Phil’s work is more sober, and more consistent. Robyn is now on maternity leave but we are very fortunate that she continues to produce her articles for us, somehow taming Phil’s creative spirit. ‘The Alerts, Soup to Nuts’ is their first attempt at a ‘Soup to Nuts’ article. It all seemed so easy at first, evidently, but the more they got into the subject, ran tests and so on, the more they realised how little they understood of the subject. A quick rustle through the SQL Server Administration books convinced them that few others did either. The whole subject of tokens seemed to be completely neglected in many of the books on SQL Server Administration. After a long struggle, I think that the team succeeded well.

Arthur Fuller is a stalwart ‘Friend of Red-Gate’ whose first article for us was over two years ago. The Database from Hell  is his fifth. This was supposed to be the first draft, but we liked its freshness so much we popped it in without the usual tidying and editing. We apologise in advance to the irate Scotsman who dislikes it when a Red-Gate product get a mention, but it was all part of the story. The illustration we used was adapted from Eric Liberge’s ‘Tonnere Rampant’, with Eric’s permission, and we are delighted with it. He is a great illustrator, whose work deserves to be more widely known.

The Simple-Talk newsletter continues to demand more attention than it should, because it seems to be unreasonably singled out by some versions of Microsoft Outlook as spam. Conspiracy theorists might have a field day with this, but it is very likely an over-zealous algorithm. We’ll be experimenting with the layout in the next few weeks and any opinions you have will be gratefully received.