April 2007 Archives

After finishing the first Refactoring Databases book. I started on a short ebook project, this book was going to tackle on a very specific technical topic mentioned in the first book. I wanted to write about all the specific scenarios and all the techniques I follow on the various projects.

The result of this effort was Recipes for Continuous Database Integration: Evolutionary Database Development, thanks to Martin Fowler for the title. This eBook laid out in a recipes kind of format provides various ways you can integrate you database into you development cycle and make evolutionary database development a fun thing to work with

Special thanks to my current ThoughtWorks project team, Andy Slocum in particular and Scott Ambler for all the help.

Last week I was at SD Best Practices in Moscow, doing a presentation on "Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design". Moscow seems like a interesting place, loads of huge buildings, squares, fountains and roads. Things some how feel rundown, feels like a player trying to regain his former ability or glory.

Opening Keynote by Jim McCarthy about how teams should operate was interesting, he proposed 11 principals or protocols as he calls them, to be followed by members in a team so that the team becomes more productive, many of these protocols are about avoiding waste and promoting clear communication channels.

While doing my presentation I had live translators which I experienced for the very first time, I also had a hard time trying to understand questions from the audience, since there was no reverse translator who would translate from Russian to English. The audience would try and ask the questions in English which would invariably get confusing.Anyway I think I had a good time meeting all the folks out in Moscow and was pleasantly surprised to find out that ThoughtWorks has a following in Russia.

I have been working at ThoughtWorks for 8 years now, its a fun place to work. Reason I'm blogging about this, ThoughtWorks is hiring in the US, UK, Australia, India, China and Canada. So go ahead send your resume to work@thoughtworks.com

Last week I received the good news. The book I co-authored with Scott Ambler won the 2007 Jolt Productivity Award in the Technical Books category. I was dumb enough not to attend the awards ceremony and receive the award, anyway when I started on the book project couple of years back I was afraid if the book would do justice to the Martin Fowler signature series, under which this book appears. The Jolt award award and all the comments I have received from many people in the last year, put me at easy, give me the feeling that finally I can relax and not worry about letting down Martin's signature series.

I think the challenges of working with the database in an evolutionary manner, are finally getting the attention they deserve. ThoughtWorks won two awards at Jolt night, my book and dbdeploy and both of them related to the database area helping projects deliver in an Evolutionary manner. More about Jolt Awards can be found at www.joltawards.com

Overall it has been a good week, getting the news about the Jolt Productivity Award the appreciation and well wishes from all ThoughtWorkers, friends and family.