It's been a long time since I last wrote a blog post; around six months to be exact. It's not that I have not been busy writing though. In April I began embarking on one of the hardest things I've ever done; writing a book with my co-author John Shaw.
And now for a brief advertisement; the book is called "Pro ADO.NET Data Services : Working with RESTful Data", and is going to be published by Apress in December. Feel free to order itJ. In fact, here's a pretty picture link…
Colleagues of mine said to me that I should blog my experiences of writing it. Howard suggested to me that I seek comments from the community about what content to include much like Ayende Rahien has done for his up and coming book. I have resisted, not only because I am exhausted from writing, but also because I think I've had a deep sense of insecurity about the whole business.
I went into the process thinking it would be like writing a big blog; a marathon blog. But in reality, it's a much harder process than that. Every line of text gets scrutinized… and rightly so, for there is no room for mistakes in a book. But the real insecurity comes from realizing you're not a seasoned writer; you're an IT professional writing a book in your spare time. Starting a chapter from a blank page is a really daunting prospect; where do you start, and how do you structure the text?
I have found it very hard deciding what content to include and what level of detail to go into. John and I decided at the beginning of the process that we wanted to write a "real world" book, where we painted ADO.NET Data Services in the context of the enterprise, because we were sick of reading about how to apply the latest and greatest technology with no mention of using it with surrounding technologies. The result is that the book covers a really diverse set of technologies you may find in your enterprise, from WCF to BizTalk and from ASP.NET AJAX to Silverlight, we have stitched together a picture of how many development landscapes look and how these technologies apply to ADO.NET Data Services. This broad array of technologies made the writing process even harder; just how do you cover ASP.NET and AJAX solutions in one chapter and make the text useful and relevant without writing a whole book about the subject?
Like software development, it is difficult to accept when you are done writing a book, because you can always add a little bit more. This problem is exacerbated when you are writing about something not yet released, as was the case when we began the project. I had to keep asking myself whether the delivery was fit for purpose, and I'm pleased to say that I'm really happy with what we've covered in the book.
But I could always write more about ADO.NET Data Services, in the next two weeks I am going to write a couple of blog entries covering additional material on more exotic subjects, such as using ADO.NET Data Services with Oracle.
It just so happens that the completion of my chapters in the book also coincides with the start of PDC 2008 in Los Angeles, where I am currently writing this post from. I think PDC this year marks the start of a new chapter in Microsoft technologies. It's certainly the most important event since WCF and WPF were announced several years ago and I now have the time to start thinking in earnest about the impact of .NET 4.0, Oslo and Dublin. After the concluding chapter of my book covers the future of services and cloud computing, it feels like the perfect place to be right now.