08 December 2014

Ideas for PL/SQL Championship(s) next year

For most of this year, we have offered two weekly, competitive quizzes on PL/SQL:

PL/SQL Challenge & PL/SQL Explore

But it doesn't really make sense to offer two different championships. At least, that's how I, the fellow who would write all those quizzes, feels about it.

There is, as one might expect, lots of overlap between the top 50 ranked players in the two quizzes: only 14 in PL/SQL Explore are not in PL/SQL Challenge's top 50.

It seems to me that it makes much more sense to have a single championship for PL/SQL, overall.

But our database design doesn't easily allow us to make that change (that is, one championship per domain with merged rankings).

So here is what I would like to do instead:

For the 2014 PL/SQL Championship, participants will be as follows:

1. The top 50 ranked players in the PL/SQL Challenge
2. The additional 14 in the top 50 of PL/SQL Explore
3. Up to 20 other wildcard and correctness players, all drawn from the PL/SQL Challenge

Then going forward, even though PL/SQL Explore will remain competitive, the PL/SQL Championship will be based only on your performance in the PL/SQL Challenge quiz.

What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks, Steven Feuerstein