How to say "good bye" to this Forum?

[VolkerBarth]

As this is the last day this SQL Anywhere Forum will be active, I'm tempted to sing a "Lament for the last days" (Bruce Cockburn)... but instead, I'm just looking back with some nostalgia on a place I have felt "home" the last fifteen years.

Anywhing you want to share as "farewell" here?

[VolkerBarth]

As stated before, I'm unhappy that the migration into the SAP Community is going to be made, and I assume probably most active users of this forum would second that. I'm particularly seeing the risk that it will be way more difficult to search for SQL Anywhere related contents within a much broader scope, at least I have not yet found out how to search only within the SQL Anywhere managed tag there. That being said, I highly appreciate Reg's work to migrate the contents in the best possible way - thanks for that!

Apparently, Justin's effort with the Forum Archive is a great alternative, hopefully that's a place for a continued community...

Let me just say big thanks to

• the late Breck Carter for starting this forum on his own account and for building a community (and so much more) around SQL Anywhere...
• to iAnywhere, Sybase, SAP for being open to run and manage this site for so many years
• to all SQL Anywhere team members for sharing so much expertise and help over the years (and to their managers for allowing them to do so) – to get directly into contact with the "ones with the code" has always been an outstanding experience for me
• everone who has asked or answered interesting questions here and helped me to learn much more about the product (and SQL and what not) by participating
• and also for a lot of fun and humorous chat over the years.

Thanks to you all!

[graeme_perrow]

I was the original administrator of the forum. I did not write most of the original code for it but I did add some features (the tiered comments was me, and I added the SAP login stuff). I coordinated with Breck to import questions from the Stack Exchange site he created and did the administration (handling backups and fixing outages and banning spammers and migrating from sybase.com to sap.com) for many years before Reg took over. I do have a bit of a funny story to tell from the early days.

I received an email from a user of the forum who discovered that other users had the ability to do things like converting comments to answers (and vice versa) or closing questions or deleting answers or other things like that, and he wondered why he didn't have those abilities. He was new to the forum so he had a low reputation score, so I explained that to him and said that as he does more on the forum, his reputation score would increase and he'd be given more abilities. But I didn't explain it very well because he thought I meant that SAP kept a "reputation score" on all of their customers. He thought that I had decided that he wasn't a "good enough" customer and that he wasn't worthy of these abilities. He got very angry and I had to forward his email on to a customer service manager who was able to convince him that that's not what I meant and that the reputation score was just the number on this forum and was not a measure of his "importance" as an SAP customer.

I believe the CSM was able to smooth things over but I very rarely interacted directly with customers after that for fear of saying the wrong thing and making them angry.

Anyway, thanks to Reg for picking up where I left off. Thanks to Mark Culp who still answers questions and does some forum admin stuff even though he retired from SAP more than five years ago. Thanks to the other current and former SAP employees who answered questions here. Thanks to Breck for getting the whole ball rolling and for being the face of the forum for years. And thanks to all the SQL Anywhere users for your questions, answers, comments, and email over the years. I will miss this place.

[VolkerBarth]

Funny story indeed! (And personally, I take from that that I'm too technically focussed, too, I should have mentioned "my reputation score" as a discount reason when ordering/renewing our licenses 😉 )

I had not mentioned the forum administrators in my original answer, which of course is inappropriate. So let me say a big thanks to you, Graeme, and to Mark and Reg for keeping this site up and running (and spam-free) through the years. 🙂

[justin_willey]

I'd like to second what Volker has said.

My colleagues and I have had immense amounts of help and support over the years from many many people, inside and outside SAP and it's predecessors, via this forum.

[timcheshire]

A big thanks to Breck, Volker and everyone who's helped and supported us over the years.

I'm going to miss the Daily Digest emails; quite often something I didn't know in them.

I've used SQLA for 20+ years to delivery solutions for my customers, I still rate it as one of the best RDBMS's out there for features, flexibility and low maintenance and this forum has provided a valuable source of information and inspiration.

Let's hope the SAP Forum improves over time.

TC

[Baron]

It is really sad to know that this place will not be available anymore, even if the contents will be available somewhere else.

I was used during the last 7 years always to write my problems here, and with the help of some super helpful people I got almost always correct and helpful answers, maybe because of this forum and the nice people here I love sqlanywhere and like always to work with it (sometimes even like hobby or fun).

Even in my freetime or during traveling I was used to read in this forum.

I hope that posting and searching in the other place will be easy and good like here.

Thank you all, and a big thank for you @Volker Barth

[former_SQLA_member1694968]

I would also like to say a big thank you to everyone who has filled this forum with life. Hope to see you in one of the new ones.

[jack_schueler]

Apparently, this forum has begotten a child ( https://sqlaanswers.com/ ) who might carry the torch. So perhaps not so sad an occasion, just another change that we are all used to.

[VolkerBarth]

Yeah, I deliberately meant to say "good bye" to this website/location, but hopefully "au revoir" to all of you involved...!

[jack_schueler]

"Bruce Cockburn" and now "au revoir". I used to think you were some nice German citizen but now I'm thinking Canada. 🙂

[VolkerBarth]

Sigh, Jack, that hope didn't age well according to really dissatisfying corporate policy w.r.t. community contents... methinks.

There's the Golden Watcom Rule ("How to do things right"), and there's SAP. 😕

[former_SQLA_member1694892]

This forum has be an invaluable source for me over the past 30 years that I have used SQL Anywhere. It's difficult to think it will be gone. ALL of you administrators, monitors, and especially Breck for starting it, have given me so much insight to issues, problems, questions and more. From reading through old comments to direct questions, I feel that I always found what I needed. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. And best of luck to you all.

[justin_willey]

Hopefully will see you all over at https://sqlaanswers.com/ . Email hello@sqlaanswers.com to get access to your account!