The MSDN forums are dead. Time to move on.

Microsoft are in the process of killing MSDN and TechNet forums.

I’ve been doing these for some 10 years now. Prior to that we had newsgroup forums (NNTP).

So, where to we go?

Lately, I’ve been participating in the Stack Exchange SQL Server community. Yes, this is under the same umbrella where also the famous Stack Overflow lives. Not strictly a forum, you might say, but IMO it serves pretty much the same purpose. People having issues with SQL Server and want help and feedback. Here are the SQL Server related stuff on DBA.SE: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sql-server .

I find that on SE, we are more encouraged to edit answers so an answer can be a reference for the future. I.e., more like a database of issues and answers. I like that idea, even though it takes a little while to get used to. Especially editing somebody else’s answer – it feels a bit impolite! 🙂

But what about the Microsoft hosted forums? They have been moved to Microsoft Q&A, which lives under Microsoft Docs.

Well, not strictly “moved” since this is an all new platform. We used to have a couple of dozens of SQL Server forums on MSDN/TechNet. MS has apparently decided that less is more and on the SQL Server Q&A, we only have 5 sub-sections.

Anyhow, go check it out. No new questions are accepted on the MSDN/TechNet platform, so you might as well get started now. You find it here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/products/sql-server .