In order to turn SQL Data Expert into a tool that maximizes your productivity and that you do not want to miss anymore in your daily database development work, we do need your help. Even if you only have limited knowledge about programming or if you are no programmer at all, your feedback is very important and valuable for the development team! In fact, in open source software development, getting feedback from the user community is one of the driving forces of the development process.

There are several ways how you can help us and thus influence the development of SQL Data Expert:

1. Filing a bug report
   Although all parts of SQL Data Expert are continuously and thoroughly tested, which is an important part of the development philosophy used within this project, bugs cannot totally be excluded from any kind of software development. Therefore, if you think that the application is not working as it should be, please send a bug report. Please be as precise as possible in describing the occurring problem and tell us, how the problem can be reproduced. Before filing a bug report, please browse through the list of open bugs and check if the problem you found has been reported already. This will reduce the workload of the developers.


2. Submitting a feature request
   If you have an idea how we could improve SQL Data Expert or what feature is missing, please let us know and send a feature request. Again, please be as detailed and specific as possible in describing the improvement you would like to see in SQL Data Expert.


3. Sharing a patch
   If you are a programmer and you fixed a problem within SQL Data Expert or implemented a new feature, please share your work and send a patch. The development team will review your changes and incooporate them into our code, if possible. When sending a patch, please send it in the so-called unified diff format. Please only send patches against the latest release or the current development version on CVS and please do not forget to specfy, for which version you have created the patch. Patches that do not fulfill these requirements, will not be considered for incooporation into our code base.


4. Translating the user interface
   In order to make SQL Data Expert interesting for a large user community, the application supports internationalization. This means that the user interface of SQL Data Expert can be translated into any language. If you want to contribute by translating the user interface into your language, your help would be very valuable for us. Please email the project manager, if you are interested in doing translation work.


5. Joining the development team
   If you are a developer and would like to join our team and contribute to SQL Data Explorer on a regular basis, you are welcome to do so. Please send us some valuable contribution to the project first, and if you feel like it is time for you to join, email the project manager telling a bit about your skills and what exactly you would like to contribute. Your application will taken into consideration within the development team then.