I spoke in Columbus, GA and Edmonton, um…, somewhere in Canada on back to back nights this Tuesday and Wednesday. (I’m kidding, I know it’s in Alberta, and you guys like the Jets right? ) I used the same slide deck for both sessions; well, for Edmonton I didn’t even use a slide deck, but the scripts I covered were a little different. I’ve recently learned that if you only have PowerPoint 2007 you’ll need to download this viewer because I built the slides in PowerPoint 2010. Here are the scripts for Columbus and Edmonton. I think both events went really well and got a lot of people saying: ‘Hey, this PowerShell stuff could work in my environment’. I really hope they catch the fever! I’d love to speak to each of these groups next year and see what questions they come up with and see how much they’re using it. I’ve got a more advanced session that I will be debuting a little later this year so hopefully I’ll get to share it with them too. Huge thanks to Jonathan Boulineau ( twitter ) and Colin Stasiuk ( blog | twitter ) for all they do for their groups all year long.
August, 2010:
SQL Saturday Nashville Code and Slides
Wow. I think Nashville may have just thrown down the gauntlet and tried to steal the title from Atlanta for ‘Best Attendee Shirt’. It’s pretty sweet and I can’t wait to wear mine. The speaker shirt was excellent as well; I may wear mine to work next Friday. Unfortunately I couldn’t stick around because I had a date with history but as promised, here are the scripts and slides I used. As for the session itself. I got several compliments and saw quite a few good tweets on twitter but I have to say I could have done better. *As always* I tried showing off a script that I had never dived into during a SQL event and it ended up generating more questions than I expected. It was a little out of sequence with my normal routine (hey you have to try new things) and unfortunately I realized afterwards that it should have been the 4th script that I demoed not the second. BUT. The questions that were asked were great and it was great feedback as to what people were able to pick up on without ever having seen PowerShell before. I will reseed this scripts for my presentation tonight at the Columbus, GA chapter. Who know, maybe if I get it right Louis will let me come back and do the full session after the Summit.
Late August 2010 PASS VC Presentations
Writing a better Where Clause SQL Storage for Performance: Best Practices _____________________________________________________________ Writing a better Where Clause August 24th 8:00 AM EDT (GMT -4) Presenter: Scott Gleason This session will cover the basics of writing optimized query’s with focus on the ‘where clause’ and ‘having clause’ of a select statement. If you have never attended a query performance session before, you’ll learn a lot! Scott Gleason Scott has worked in Jacksonville Florida exclusively as DBA for over nine years. He is currently the Vice President of the Jacksonville SQL Server Users Group (JSSUG) and actively speaks about SQL at SQL Saturdays and Code Camps. How do I view the presentation? Attendee URL: Live Meeting Link _____________________________________________________________ SQL Storage for Performance: Best Practices August 25th 12:00 AM EDT (GMT -4) Presenter: Amy Styers SQL Storage Planning for Best Performance What are the different storage optimizations available for SQL server? What are some techniques that can be used to determine performance bottlenecks? Amy will discuss tips and tricks from the field on how to answer these questions for planning and designing your SQL infrastructure from disk up! Amy Styers Amy is a Microsoft Infrastructure Architect in the EMC Commercial Solutions Advisory Group where she has been engaged for the last three years discussing with customers their options for highly available, highly scalable, high performing Microsoft applications. She regularly addresses customers with regards to their virtualization initiatives and helps customers make decisions regarding architecting their Microsoft infrastructures both in physical and virtual environments. Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join?id=S2G482&role=attend
Atlanta B/I User Group Meeting
Did you know Atlanta has a B/I User Group? This new group is a special extension to Atlanta MDF that focuses on providing monthly BI content and discussions for the hard working people of Atlanta. The first meeting of the B/I SIG of the Atlanta MDF is tonight, 6:30 pm at Matrix Resources in Perimeter. (Did I mention that Matrix is a wonderful sponsor of us SQL folks here in Atlanta?) The topic is going to be something I keep meaning to try out: PowerPivot. Come on ouy and help get this new group off to a great start. Here are all the vital details for you: Topic: Self-service B/I with PowerPivot Date: Monday, August 23, 2010 Speaker: Teo Lachev Meeting Agenda 6:30 – 6:45 – Networking, Announcements 6:45 – 7:15 – Sponsor Presentation(s) 7:15 – 8:15 – Main Presentation(s) 8:15 – 8:30 – Q&A, Discussion Meeting Place Matrix Resources 115 Perimeter Center Place Suite 250 (South Terraces Building) Atlanta, GA 30346 Directions and parking information
Speaking at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville
Wow, having been an attendee at SQL Saturday #21 in October of last year (just 10 months ago) I can’t believe we’re already up to #51. That means we’re averaging 3 a month and there’s no stopping in site; in fact Next year’s schedule is already starting to fill in. If you’re wondering where the closest one to you is just have a look at the Map. I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #51 about PowerShell just before Allen White and our sessions cover completely different content so please come to both! As soon as I’m done with my session I’m headed straight out the door and to the “World’s Fastest Half Mile”. That’s right, I’m taking a 230 mile detour on my way to the night race. There is going to be a freaking amazing amount of great speakers at this event and if you live within a 6 hour drive of Music City I Highly recommend you don’t miss one of the best lineups since SQL Saturday#33 in Charlotte. I always try to work in a new script into each session but I’m actually speaking 3 times in the next week so I have no idea how I’m going to come up with 3 new things so fast but I’ll try. Here are some vital stats on the event and I hope to you’ll come heckle me in Nashville: SQLSaturday #51 will be held on August 21st, 2010, at Nashville State Community College (120 White Bridge Road, Nashville, Tennessee, 37209). Event check-in will be at 7:30 with the sessions beginning at 8:00. Sessions will wrap up between 5:00 and 5:30. Schedule Start Time Business Intelligence Cafeteria Database Administration Database Development Professional Development Session Mix 08:30 AM Rafael Salas Planning your ETL architecture with SSIS Thomas LaRock DBA Survivor Aaron Nelson The Dirty Dozen: PowerShell Scripts for Busy DBAs Allen White XQuery Basics Andy Warren Building a Professional Development Plan Alan Brewer SQL Server 2008 R2 Utility and Data-tier Apps 9:45 AM Douglas McDowell Realizing ROI for Business Intelligence Projects Allen White Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell William Pearson Design and Implement Like Edison! Stuart Ainsworth The Social DBA: Resources for Career Building Andy Leonard Database Design for Developers 11:00 AM Wayne Snyder Information Visualization – Designing great Charts Jason Strate Are You Following Your Own Best Practices? Hope Foley Working with Spatial Data in SQL Server 2008 Mark Tabladillo Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010 Jeremiah Peschka Fundamentals of SQL Server Internals 12:15 PM Kevin Kline Keynote 01:00 PM Craig Utley Analysis Services 2008 End-to-End Arie Jones Monitoring Data Changes with Change Data Capture Jack Cannon From Access To SQL Server* Jeremiah Peschka Taking Control of Your Career Glenn Berry DMV Emergency Room! 02:15 PM Jessica Moss Make Reporting Services Work For You Kendra Little Take the Awesomeness Home: the Data Collector Kevin Boles Common TSQL Mistakes John Welch Creating Custom Components for SSIS Brian Kelley Fortress SQL Server 03:30 PM Barry Ralston Introduction to MDX for SQL Programmers Thomas LaRock What Are You Waiting For? Robert Cain Data Dude – Making DB developers more productive Drew Minkin Data Mining in Action: A case study Andy Warren Introduction to SQL Server Statistics 4:45 PM Experts Panel Stump the “Experts”
I'll be speaking at the Columbus, GA PASS Chapter
Next Tuesday I’ll be speaking at the Columbus, GA PASS Chapter. This was actually supposed to be the first time for me to speak at a User Group meeting (as opposed to a SQL Saturday) but duty called in Atlanta this week. As always, there will be something new that I’ve never showed off before, most likely just a failed script from my Atlanta session but hey, they didn’t get to see it yet. I’ve also been asked to include some sys-admin type stuff so I will do a walk through of Implicit Remoting and probably some important tips on working with Services. There will also be an XML demo if there are any developers that want to check it out. Details: The meeting will be held at the Columbus Library Date: 8/24/2010 Time: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM 3000 Macon Rd, Columbus, GA 31906
Atlanta MDF Code and Slides
We had a great crowd of about 60 people last night at the Atlanta MDF which was really great considering it was the first day of school for a lot of the parents in the area. The crowd had a bunch of great questions and while I couldn’t handle all of them I took several notes and will hopefully blog about the answers as I find them over the next couple of weeks. As promised, here are the scripts and slides I used. Resources: I mentioned several different resources last night and here are the ones I remember (just comment if you’re looking for one I forgot about): I did a week-long blog series on PowerShell with SQL Server for SQL University. Here’s the CodePlex project so that you can edit PowerShell in Visual Studio 2010 (You also need to install the free version of PowerGUI for this) The cheap software to build desktop gadgets with charts and maps is called Power Gadgets. A few weeks back I did a post on the top Learning Resources I use to learn PowerShell. and of course I can’t finish without saying: If you need some help getting started from scratch using PowerShell with SQL Server check out my video on MSDN’s geekSpeak. del.icio.us Tags: del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server 2008,Atlanta,PowerShell
I'll be speaking at the Atlanta MDF
I’ll be speaking at the Atlanta MDF Monday night (2010-08-09). I wanted to talk about internals but they’re making me speak about PowerShell. I have a couple new demos since my Standing-Room-Only presentation at SQL Saturday #41 – Atlanta and as always I will have one new demo that I’ve never shown before. If you’re in the area please come on out and see why I love using PowerShell to work with SQL Server so much. Details: Please register so we know how much pizza to order. Date: 8/9/2010 Time: 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM Place: Microsoft 1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300, Alpharetta, GA Speaker: Me. del.icio.us Tags: Where I’ll Be Speaking,Atlanta,PowerShell,SQL Server 2008