Good day to all Forum's Ninjas, Forum's users, and guests 🙂

I never sure if I should say Good Morning or good evening, so I always use "Good day". For the same reason, I am not sure if I should say "tomorrow" or "later on today", since the date/time is depending on your time-zone, but I can say that in about 10 hours from now, I'm giving a lecture about SQL Server 2016 new security features. but... this is not what I wanted to discuss today

Today I want to invite you to another "Featured Forum post", where we choose a "forum post" or "forum thread" from the MSDN/TechNet Forums, and we write about the value of it.

If you read my previous "Featured Forum post" blog's posts or if you familiar with my approach, then you probably already know that I see the forum as a place where people can get help in learning and not as a support system where you "opens a ticket -> gets short answer -> closes the ticket". So, In the spirit of learning, I think that I chose a perfect thread for today, and I HIGHLY recommend to click this link and join the discussion.

How did I come to this thread?

Well, this bring me back to my opening… Each time that I am giving a technical lecture, even if the topic is well known and I already spoke about it several times before, I check the internet for relevant information like updates. As a moderator at MSDN/TechNet forums, one of the first places that I check (right after the official documentation) is the forum. This how I came across this thread 🙂

My first tip of the day is for these who lecture or teach: Always search the documentation and the internet in general, for updates regarding the lecture topic, before any meeting! SQL Server, like other products, is always under development, and updates are released very often. Try to follow the updates and make sure that your lecture is relevant for today and not for the year 2005 (unfortunately I saw this happens even by MVPs).

What I liked about this thread?

Well, first of all, the content is very useful for anyone who want to use the new feature in SQL Server 2016 named "Always Encrypted", with the Windows ODBC Driver. I am sure that a lot of people encounter the same issue.

Secondly, from the point of view of the community, this is a great community discussion. It started with a simple question and it evolved to general discussion, led by Dan Guzman, who is one of the forum's most active members, a moderator, and Microsoft MVP (here you can see why).

And above all, I loved the approach of the OP (GordonPrince4575), which started with a question but didn't end the discussion after he got the answer. As a start, he remembered to say thanks to the people that helped him and he closed the thread, which unfortunately it is something that lot of the people in the forum forget. Moreover, after Gordon successfully implemented the solution that he got, he came back to the forum, in order to help others. He continued the discussion and brought full explanation of what was wrong and how he fixed it. He even took the time to take a screen snapshot, which he included in the response.  I hope that he will read this post. Well done GordonPrince4575!

For summary

I could not summarize it better batter than Gordon, so in the words of Gordon:
Another success from the forums.
Cheers.

Thanks Gordon, Dan Guzman, and Jakub Szymaszek for a great discussion about important issue.

 

Forums, the final frontier
– Ronen Ariely,
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