A recent email from someone asking me about something I posted back in 2010 on this site, made me think about SDN and the very first question. For some reason I recalled SDN started back in 2004. I have from time to time covered this sites stats so have an interest in its history. However, I found information from 2003. So I was wrong and I trust SDN's Wikipedia entry as it states 2003 and way back machine confirmed it for me.
The first question I found was from Mark Finnern
From this, I turned my search onto another thought, sometimes very old questions are resurrected. If that is an appropriate term for updates to very old questions :). So a bit of a homework quiz for myself to create a SQL query to try and find out the longest gap in updates to questions. When I found the 3rd question created on SDN was moderated 13 years later on some of my first queries I stopped searching :) seems to me that must be hard to beat. However 15 years was the longest gap (I found) ! Maybe the genius backwards compatibility/stability of SAP software or even technical debt that will have to be paid later when upgrades/changes have to be made, keeps question relevant. Also I smiled at Peter's reply to an answer on his 11 year old question (4th on my search) as he could not recall the problem that prompted the question, :)
Wow, 2003... I also thought 2004 was the official SDN birth year and, if memory serves, 10 years of SDN were celebrated at TechEd 2014. Perhaps there was an earlier "soft opening" before the official ribbon cutting?
Thanks for sharing this!
It was 2003, and the 10th birthday was celebrated at TechEd in 2013. (Several folks published birthday blog posts, among them Thomas Jung: https://blogs.sap.com/2013/09/16/happy-birthday-scn/.)
Definitely 2003 :-)
I suppose my bias towards 2004 was based on everyone's favourite SDN discussion, SDN/SCN points :) !
As the data I collected (years ago) on points started from 2004. I thought maybe all those years ago I missed 2003. So back to way back machine and seems the drop down at this link only has 2004, so I guess points started in 2004 and I didn't miss 2003
https://web.archive.org/web/20090705091705/http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/topcontributors
Yes, Robert Russell, you nailed it. SDN started in 2003, and the original points system was introduced in 2004.
Hi Rob!
I once tried to find the oldest question on SCN - I found this one from July 2003:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/787961/the-bug-report-should-prefill-my-user-and-email-ad.html
However instead of using advanced SQL queries I used the SAP Community functionality :) If anyone else is interested in old SCN threads use the following link:
https://answers.sap.com/index.html?page=169174&pageSize=15&sort=active&filter=all