A couple days ago, I posted a blog entry to inform everyone that (a) the wiki version of my Just Enough Structured Analysis (JESA) book is now available, here; and (b) since it is a wiki, it’s available to everyone for editing and revision.

So far, this has elicited little more than a loud yawn (or perhaps it was a groan) from the blogosphere. Well, that’s understandable: who wants to try rewriting a 600-page book about a software methodology that predates UML and object-oriented stuff by 20-30 years? I feel your pain; it was pretty hard writing the first time around, too!

But how about spending a few minutes on a fairly minor task: adding hyperlinks to books, articles, interesting terms, and references to one or more chapters in the book? It’s relatively simply, doesn’t require you to be a rocket scientist, and may actually be helpful for future generations of students who are stumbling through this stuff. For whatever it’s worth, software companies are still hiring people with education or skills involving “Yourdon stuff”; with my various blog-searching and Google-keyword services, I see one or two job listings a week like this one, suggesting that there may be some economic value to learning what structured analysis is all about. And if you’ve got to learn about it, why not make it reasonably up to date?

As a small example, take a look at what I’ve done to Chapter 9 of my JESA book, which discusses data-flow diagrams in nauseating detail. I mention it because, to my eternal surprise, it has been the single most popular page on my website for well over a year. I couldn’t explain the phenomenon until I happened to notice that the Wikipedia article on dataflow diagrams contains a direct URL link to the aforementioned chapter. In any case, if you look closely at the first page or two of the chapter, and/or the “References” section at the end of the chapter, you’ll see that I’ve converted the original textual references to various textbooks and articles into hyperlinks to appropriate pages on the Web and/or pages within the Amazon bookstore, so that inquisitive readers can track down the material if they’re at all interested.

Again, this isn’t rocket science. But if you’re unfamiliar with the details of the MediaWiki quasi-HTML syntax, it may be a little intimidating at first. You’ll find a link on the left side of the page entitled “How To Use this Wiki,” and buried within that page is a URL that leads you to a “cheat sheet” that shows the syntax details for creating hyperlinks, as well as the syntax to formatting ordinary text into italicized and/or bold-face text, etc.

I haven’t finished fully annotated Chapter 9, but at least I’ve made a start; of particular interest is the reference to the excellent 1998 book, Complete Systems Analysis: The Workbook, the Textbook, the Answers, by James and Suzanne Robertson. That book wasn’t written until 9 years after my original Modern Structured Analysis book was written (though I had been acquainted with “the Robs,” as they were known, since the early 1980s), so obviously it wasn’t listed in the references of that original tome … nor was it in the JESA book that I first uploaded onto the Web in 2000. But it certainly deserves to be on the list, and now it is.

So, come on, folks! I’ll eventually get this updated and revised on my own, if need be, but it will be a long and slow process. More important, I’m sure I’ll overlook a bunch of stuff that other folks could add … or modify … or (shudder) delete. So, in what little spare time you might have available, track down the wiki and dig in! Future generations of students will thank you…