Re: FW: Hiding what the software does and how?

[Michael Collier <mcollier -at- ARLUT -dot- UTEXAS -dot- EDU>]

Philomena:

If your users are writing queries in SQL, you might check out some
advanced SQL manuals. A few years ago I wrote a training manual like the
one you are working on for users of a chemical database.

One good resource I used was Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL
Programming (ISBN: 1558603239).

In doing such a manual it's good to include a lot of example queries and
query-writing exercises. It's effective to use the manual in a classroom
setting, if you can arrange that. You will have to make sure that your
users understand why a query produces, or does not produce, a particular
result. The query result set often is not what you thought you asked
for, and the users have to understand why.

There's other techniques you can use in a manual to explain queries,
such as diagramming queries and other ways of helping users visualize
the process. I can also probably recommend some other resources--contact
me off line.

Philomena Hoopes wrote:
>
> Hi, all --
>
> This is exactly the area that our Technical Communications team is
> discussing: given a massive data warehouse, and an equally complex
> metadatabase, how can the user define a query to retrieve the correct data
> as precisely as possible? I'm now designing the manual that will describe
> the necessary concepts and strategies. It's quite a challenge, as I've seen
> no similar manuals up to this point.

--
................................................................................
Michael Collier                 Phone:  512-835-3408
Information Systems Laboratory  FAX:    512-490-4254
ARL                             Office: AX207
University of Texas at Austin   email:  mcollier -at- arlut -dot- utexas -dot- edu
................................................................................


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=