Out of curiosity, did you look at or utilize DataStax’s free online training?

See:
http://www.datastax.com/what-we-offer/products-services/training/virtual-training

Any feedback? Any suggestions as to what needs it does or doesn’t fulfill?

-- Jack Krupansky

From: Nicholas Okunew 
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 8:29 AM
To: user@cassandra.apache.org 
Subject: Re: Why is the cassandra documentation such poor quality?

I think the problem is a little deeper than that. I've been working with 
cassandra for about 7 months now - it was very challenging to find out any real 
information about using cassandra, and even harder to get clear information on 
operating it. There's a truckload of reading you have to do, and no one place 
you can find it.  

Searching google largely turns up datastax blog posts and DSE docs, almost all 
of it out of date (not to say the docs aren't up to date, but the search 
results often result in old docs, and old blog posts).

Deeper searching usually results in a link to JIRA. No offense to anyone 
involved, but when your first experience of trying to learn an open source tool 
is the realisation that all the information you need is simply spread across 
~7000 jira tickets, it doesn't make the knowledge feel very accessible.

As an example, finding a java driver with a useful abstraction was non-trivial 
- it appeared on the surface that there wasn't really one, that you had to 
write everything yourself on top of CQL. Now I (as everyone else on this list 
knows) that datastax provide one. At the time I never found a simple page that 
just pointed me in the direction, and showed a basic usage example.

Another example is that there is constant confusion about nonclamenture on this 
list, because naming has changed over time. If you don't know you're reading 
old information, or what the significant changes are between 0.whatever, 
1.whatever and 2.whatever its very hard to know whether you're even googling 
for the right thing. Dynamic columns are a great example of this. I think the 
fact that it keeps coming up on this list is a strong indicator that the 
information is not available in a 'sufficient' way.

Another way of putting it is, when I started trying to learn about cassandra, 
pretty much every piece of consumable information I was able to find was out of 
date, but it wasn't always obvious that this was the case.

Having said all that, everything I've seen on this list points to prompt, 
useful and friendly assistance, even for questions that are frequently asked. I 
have no stake either way in what the rules on who can contribute are, but I can 
definitely say I would have very much enjoyed a much softer landing when trying 
to learn cassandra, from the basics all the way through to the detail of ops.





On 23 July 2014 21:55, Jason Wee <peich...@gmail.com> wrote:

  I agree to the people here already sharing their ways to access 
documentation. If you are starter, you should better spend time to search for 
documentation (like using google) or hours to read. Then start ask specific 
question. Coming here kpkb about poor quality of documentation just does not 
cut it.  

  If you find documentation is outdated, you can email to the people in charge 
and tell them what is wrong and what you think will improve. There are some 
documentation which is left there so that we can read and understand history 
where it came from and some may still use old version of cassandra.



  On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Jack Krupansky <j...@basetechnology.com> 
wrote:

    And the simplest and easiest thing to do is simply email this list when you 
see something wrong or missing in the DataStax Cassandra doc, or for anything 
that is not adequately anywhere. I work with the doc people there, so I can 
make sure they see corrections and improvements. And simply sharing knowledge 
on this list is always a big step forward.

    -- Jack Krupansky

    From: spa...@gmail.com 
    Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 4:25 AM
    To: user@cassandra.apache.org 
    Subject: Re: Why is the cassandra documentation such poor quality?

    I would like to help out with the documentation of C*. How do I start?




    On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Robert Stupp <sn...@snazy.de> wrote:

      Just a note:
      If you have suggestions how to improve documentation on the datastax 
website, write them an email to d...@datastax.com. They appreciate proposals :)

      Am 23.07.2014 um 09:10 schrieb Mark Reddy <mark.re...@boxever.com>:


        Hi Kevin,

        The difference here is that the Apache Cassandra site is maintained by 
the community whereas the DataStax site is maintained by paid employees with a 
vested interest in producing documentation. 

        With DataStax having some comprehensive docs, I guess the desire for 
people to maintain the Apache site has dwindled. However, if you are interested 
in contributing to it and bringing it back up to standard you can, thus is the 
freedom of open source. 


        Mark



        On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Kevin Burton <bur...@spinn3r.com> 
wrote:

          This document:

          https://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations


          … for example.  Is extremely out dated… does NOT reflect 2.x releases 
certainly.  Mentions commands that are long since removed/deprecated.

          Instead of giving bad documentation, maybe remove this and mark it as 
obsolete.

          The datastax documentation… is … acceptable I guess.  My main 
criticism there is that a lot of it it is in their blog. 

          Kevin


          -- 


          Founder/CEO Spinn3r.com

          Location: San Francisco, CA

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