Poll: What do you think of this OSQA-alternative to StackExchange?

[Breck_Carter]

I don't care what you think about the actual content of this site, but what you think about the presentation: http://ask.sqlservercentral.com/

...because, on July 13, StackExchange may cease to exist for us.

Thanks!

[Former Member]

I have to admit I have never taken the time to learn the features that have been available thru StackExchange, I just ask questions and read answers. so when I looked at that other site, it appears to me like a dead-ringer for StackExchange with different icons. So me thinks it would work just fine.

Since this is still a labor of love that you keep going for the benefit of all of us loyal SQLA users around the world, I think the real question is: What do YOU think of it? If you like it, we are with you!

Bill

[Breck_Carter]

I'm thinking I shouldn't over-think this thing 🙂

[Former Member]

a small note, RSS feed is not working on the above site. http://ask.sqlservercentral.com/feeds/rss

[former_SQLA_member1694886]

We've been looking into alternatives as well, as we had a Q&A site project ready to launch on the Stackexchange platform.

There appears to be only two real contenders - in terms of overall functionality, stability and active development. That's OSQA which you are asking about, and Shapado. The latter offers hosting plans, which is not the case of OSQA - even though they will refer you to a number of (rather cheap I'd say) hosting providers with instructions about how to set up the engine.

OSQA runs under Django (Python) and uses either MySQL or PostGreSQL. I'm told all SQL calls are now removed from the code and handled by the framework, so it sounds like SQL Anywhere is a serious contender. It's just a question of trying it out. Shapado is a Ruby-on-Rails application.

Both have a somewhat different feature set and seem to be evolving in different directions, Shapado being more 'social'.

As far as we're concerned we will be adopting OSQA. The intention is to get it to work on an Amazon EC2 instance (Windows-based), using SQL Anywhere as the back-end provided we don't have to spend too much time on that. I'll be happy to post the results of our implementation work, but that won't be before October / November of this year.

I'd say go for it, especially since Rick from the OSQA team has offered to set you up.

[Breck_Carter]

I'm leaning in that direction... FWIW I didn't do a lot of research before setting up SQLA on StackExchange. In other words, if OSQA was there, back then, instead of StackExchange, I probably would have used OSQA without a second thought. What am I waiting for? I dunno, something amazing... like a change of heart by the StackExchange people.

[former_SQLA_member1694886]

@Breck - OSQA is not as polished as Stackexchange, which is a really a amazing feat of software with a lots of attention to detail, but then none of the (many) clones is. Functionally I'm sure OSQA will do the job. And SQLA people are generally not an audience that requires a perfect UI to work with (look at the Google group support forums...). One thing is certain though, the Stackexchange people believe that there's a land-grab going on and they think Stackexchange 2.0 will be the perfect reincarnation of Usenet, only better, and soon achieving Facebook fame...

[VolkerBarth]

@Breck: If the time needed to setup OSQA with the current SQLA contents is quite small, I would wait to see what happens next week...

[Former Member]

FYI. SQL Anywhere already has support for Django and Ruby on Rails. See: http://code.google.com/p/sqlany-django and http://sqlanywhere.rubyforge.org/

[VolkerBarth]

Are you asking for the particular "look and feel" or the underlying system?

As far as I see, that site is running on the same OSQA software as the SQLA OSQA test site that has been announced in April in this question.

Originally, the test site had got some questions, answers and comments, I guess primarily by Justin Willey and myself - with the overall feedback to be useable, quite similar to SQLA and having some more interesting features. - It was not much feedback, however...

Somewhat later, the test site seems to have been reloaded with the original SQLA contents, and our comments there have been gone. (And that will hold back more test comments from my side.)

Well, therefore (and because of the obvioulsy helpful support by the OSQA makers), I still think of OSQA as a real alternative.

As to the particular layout, I would prefer the one from the test site.

[Former Member]

wow! thanks for the link to sqla @ osqa, never noticed it before. rss feed is working there.. great.