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SQL Saturday

Atlanta MDF Presents Three Awesome Pre-Cons in Atlanta April 13, 2012

Atlanta MDF presents:

SQL Saturday #111 Pre-Conference Sessions

imageSQL Saturday is coming back to Atlanta on April 14, and once again, we’ve managed to schedule 3 awesome pre-con sessions for the Friday before (April 13). They will cover a broad spectrum of topics: Performance Tuning, SSIS, and SSRS. Registration is limited, so go take a look and see if you or someone from your company can benefit from this great training opportunity.

Also don’t forget that we will have an absolutely amazing lineup of presenters for Saturday! We’ll be announcing the final schedule for SQL Saturday #111 by Monday, February 13th. Registration is open, and we’re already halfway to capacity, so head out to SQLSaturday.com to reserve your seat.

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Andy Leonard and Matt Masson– A Day of SSIS – http://dayofssis.eventbrite.com/

A Day of SSIS was developed by Andy Leonard to train technology professionals in the fine art of using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to build data integration and Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) solutions. The training is focused around lectures and emphasizes a practical approach. The target audience for this training is database professionals, application developers, and business intelligence practitioners interested in acquiring or expanding their existing SSIS skill set. No experience with SQL Server or SQL Server Integration Services is required before attending this training. It is helpful (but not required) that students possess some knowledge of and experience with relational databases. SQL Server knowledge / experience will be more helpful than experience and knowledge with other technologies.

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Adam Machanic – No More Guessing! An Enlightened Approach to Performance Troubleshooting – http://nomoreguessing.eventbrite.com/

Scratching your head, you stare at the screen. Should you rebuild an index? Create a new one? Reboot the server? Why is this query so slow?!? Figuring out performance problems can sometimes feel like fumbling your way through a dark room. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find the right solution―or maybe you’ll stub your toe. Either way, it’s a slow, potentially painful process. Yet finding the root cause of most performance issues is a simple exercise, once you understand where to look and when. In this full day seminar, you will learn a proven methodology that can be used to approach virtually any performance problem. Created and refined by Adam Machanic over several years, this strategy leverages core SQL Server performance tools (including dynamic management views, Extended Events, and WMI counters), applying them to various performance troubleshooting techniques (such as waits and queues analysis, baselining, and real-time activity monitoring). Each of these tools and techniques has a unique role, and you will learn to use them cooperatively to quickly and adaptively find the actual cause of performance issues. All of this will be illustrated through complete demonstrations that will teach you how to drill from high-level problem detection all the way to specific spot in a query plan or deeper―pinpointing the exact problem and helping you to quickly solve it. Attend this seminar to take full control of your databases—and never again stumble blindly through the dimly lit world of performance troubleshooting.

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Jessica Moss – Learn SSRS in a Day – http://ssrsinaday.eventbrite.com/

SQL Server MVP, Jessica M. Moss, presents an exciting, introductory, full day training session on SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. In the three-part class, Jessica will teach you how to build reports from the ground up. In Part 1, learn the basics of report development, including picking a report development tool and creating your first report. Part 2 delves into visualizations, groupings, and drill-down functionality. Finally, Part 3 highlights core administration tasks in Reporting Services. In addition, Jessica will point out industry-wide best practices for report development and show numerous live demos using a variety of data sources.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Georgia State University – Alpharetta
3775 Brookside Pkwy
Alpharetta, GA

Map picture

 

Register for pre-conference sessions by March 15 for $99!
($109 after March 15)

For registration to the Saturday Event and more information visit http://www.sqlsaturday.com/111/eventhome.aspx.

I’ll Be Speaking at SQL Saturday #49 in Orlando

imageWe’ve worked with the organizers of SQL Saturday #49 to be able to bring you a full day line up of PowerShell but it get’s even better.  In addition to myself and the usual Florida crew of PowerShell-for-SQL speakers, as luck would have it Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson and the Scripting Wife just happened to be on vacation in Orlando that very weekend!  Open-mouthed smile 

I’ll be doing my intermediate session on PowerShell to give those scripts one last run through before choosing what to show off at the Summit.  If you’ve seen my beginner session in Tampa, Jacksonville, or Miami this one picks up and builds on that one.  Not much has changed for the intermediate session since Columbia but it is a long car ride down there and I’m not driving so we’ll see if I come up with something new.  I hope to see you there.

Here’s the lineup:

Start Time PowerShell
09:00 AM Maximo Trinidad
Working with SQL Server – SQLPS
10:15 AM Aaron Nelson
The Dirty Dozen: PowerShell Scripts for Busy DBAs
11:30 AM Aaron Nelson
PowerShell 2.0 Beyond the Dirty Dozen
01:15 PM Ron Dameron
Why a DBA Should Learn PowerShell (MINI)
01:30 PM Ronald Dameron
Automate Login Administration & Compliance Reports
02:45 PM Ed Wilson
Windows PowerShell Best Practices for SQL DBA’s
04:00 PM Chad Miller
ETL with PowerShell

Historical Dates for SQL Saturdays

Yesterday afternoon a conversation popped up on twitter about organizers and speakers already trying to figure out dates for SQL Saturdays in 2011. I’ve been thinking this needs to be worked on proactively for some time now so I jumped right into the conversation. Now I don’t know but a handful of dates for 2011 that a few organizers have mentioned to me but luckily having parsed so much other SQL Saturday data, coming up with a list of when cities have held SQL Saturdays in the past was a piece of cake. 20 minutes total including this post. Hopefully this info will help a few organizers pick dates for 2011.

As Promised [yesterday on twitter] here is a “calendar” of all the historical SQL Saturdays and the Saturday that they would fall on if they were held in 2011. To calculate the Saturday I just grabbed the week number from the previous and then just added years from there with some date functions in SQL Server.

The number beside the city is the # of times a SQL Saturday has been held on that weekend in that city, not total # of SQL Saturdays period. The cities with zeros are like that because they haven’t held a SQL Saturday on that weekend yet but are scheduled to hold one on that date. Hope that all makes sense (it made sense in my head).

Week # Saturday Historical Cities
1 1/1/2011
2 1/8/2011
3 1/15/2011
4 1/22/2011 0 Louisville
2 Tampa
5 1/29/2011 1 Boston
0 Houston
6 2/5/2011 0 Cleveland
7 2/12/2011 1 Tampa
8 2/19/2011 0 Phoenix
9 2/26/2011
10 3/5/2011 1 Charlotte
11 3/12/2011 1 Philadelphia
12 3/19/2011
13 3/26/2011 1 Birmingham
14 4/2/2011
15 4/9/2011 1 Richmond
16 4/16/2011 1 Chicago
17 4/23/2011 2 Atlanta
1 New York City
1 Huntington Beach
18 4/30/2011 2 Jacksonville
1 Wheeling
19 5/7/2011 1 Jacksonville
20 5/14/2011
21 5/21/2011 1 Portland
1 Dallas
22 5/28/2011 1 Birmingham
23 6/4/2011 2 Pensacola
1 Portland
24 6/11/2011 1 Redmond
25 6/18/2011
26 6/25/2011 1 Columbus
27 7/2/2011
28 7/9/2011
29 7/16/2011
30 7/23/2011
31 7/30/2011 1 South Florida
1 Baton Rouge
32 8/6/2011 1 South Florida
33 8/13/2011 1 Baton Rouge
34 8/20/2011 1 Nashville
35 8/27/2011
36 9/3/2011
37 9/10/2011
38 9/17/2011 1 San Diego
1 East Iowa
1 Raleigh
39 9/24/2011 1 Colorado
40 10/1/2011 1 Columbia
1 Kansas City
1 Redmond
41 10/8/2011 1 Gainesville (Atlanta)
1 Greenville
42 10/15/2011 2 Orlando
1 East Iowa
43 10/22/2011 0 Dallas
0 Salt Lake City
1 Louisville
1 Orlando
44 10/29/2011 0 Minnesota
45 11/5/2011 1 Orlando
46 11/12/2011
47 11/19/2011 0 New York City
48 11/26/2011
49 12/3/2011 0 DC
50 12/10/2011
51 12/17/2011
52 12/24/2011
53 12/31/2011

I’ll be Speaking at SQL Saturday #48 in Columbia, SC

image I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #48 this weekend and I am happy to announce I will be unveiling my more advanced PowerShell session to help people customize scripts for their own environment.  I will be showing off several new scripts that I built for my session at the PASS Summit this year.  Please be ready to give plenty of brutal feedback on these scripts so that I can incorporate that feedback in the final versions that I take to the Summit.

Map picture

Besides my two sessions I will be joined by Eric Humphrey ( blog | twitter ) and Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson ( blog | twitter ) who will also be speaking about PowerShell.  Eric totally stole the idea for his session from me but hey I guess ‘Great Minds Think Alike’ ;-)   Just a quick glance at the schedule shows experts descending on Columbia from Richmond, Tampa, Orlando & Alabama just to name a few so don’t even think of coming up with some lame excuse that it’s too far to drive.  We’ll also be joined by a bunch of SQL Experts from Microsoft’s Charlotte campus so it’s definitely work the trip and I hope to hear you heckle me there!

Start Time Large Session BI 1 BI 2 DB Admin 1 DB Admin 2 DB Dev 1 DB Dev 2 Misc
08:15 AM SQLSat Staff
Opening Remarks
             
8:30 AM Alejandro Mesa
Parameter Sniffing
Jessica Moss
Make Reporting Services Work For You
Stuart Ainsworth
Confessions of a Data Integrator: Bad Designs
Andy Warren
DBA 101: The Basics
Sergey Pustovit
SQL Server Performance Related DMVs
Alex Tocitu
PowerSQL(CLR)
Eric Humphrey
Things To Do With PowerShell & SMO
William Pearson
Attribute Discretization in Analysis Services
9:45 AM Andy Leonard
Database Design for Developers
Wayne Snyder
Information Visualization – Making great Charts
John Welch
Creating Custom Components for SSIS
Janis Griffin
SQL Server Service Broker – An Overview
Aaron Nelson
The Dirty Dozen: PowerShell Scripts for Busy DBAs
Matthew Campbell
Going Spatial
Andrew Kelly
Maximizing Plan Re-use in SQL 2008
Jose Chinchilla
Get Cert! Get Cred!
11:00 AM Sergey Pustovit
SQL Server Diagnostics Tools Unleashed
Evan Basalik
Troubleshooting SSRS Performance
William Pearson
Getting Started with MDX
Sandra Mueller
Data Files and Transaction Logs — beyond the GUIs
Geoff Hiten
Clustering for Mere Mortals
Tim Chapman
How, where, why, and when to use Dynamic SQL
Rafael Salas
Managing Database Schemas With VS201 DB projects
Andy Warren
Building a Professional Development Plan
12:00 PM Stuart Ainsworth
Lunch & Red Gate Software Demo
             
1:15 PM Andrew Kelly
Storage and I/O Best Practices for SQL Server
Andy Leonard
SSIS Design Patterns
Mark Tabladillo
Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010
David Taylor
To click or to type, that is the question.
Aaron Nelson
PowerShell 2.0 Beyond the Dirty Dozen
Brett Tomson
T-SQL Enhancements in SQL Server 2008
Alex Tocitu
CLR 101
Chris Skorlinski
Top 5 fastest ways as DBA to get fired
2:30 PM Ed Wilson
Windows PowerShell Best Practices for SQL DBA’s
Julie Smith
Cool Tricks to Pull from your SSIS Hat
Sandra Mueller
OLTP (yes!) Databases and Cube Design
Ben DeBow
Consolidated SQL Server Architectures
Evan Basalik
Diagnosing connectivity issues with SQL Server
Stuart Ainsworth
You Got XML In My Database? What’s Up With That?
Bob Langley
Introduction To Column Level Encryption
Eric Humphrey
Object Relational Mappers for the DBA
3:45 PM Geoff Hiten
Bad SQL
Jessica Moss
Who Needs a Data Warehouse?
Jose Chinchilla
Business Intelligence: Decaffeinated Please!
Chris Skorlinski
Introduction to Transactional Replication
Janis Griffin
Tuna Helper – Proven Process for Tuning SQL
Brett Tomson
What’s New In SSRS 2008 (With Added R2 Flair)
John Welch
Processing Flat Files with SSIS
Rafael Salas
Planning your ETL architecture with SSIS
4:45 PM SQLSat Staff
Closing Ceremonies & Raffle
             

SQL Saturday #46 Raleigh Code and Slides

SQLSaturday46Raleigh Well I don’t know about the attendees but I sure had a lot of fun during my PowerShell session at SQL Saturday #46 in Raleigh.  I promised some folks that I would blog out my code and slides that I used ASAP.   Here are the slides I used and more importantly here are the scripts

Grant Fritchey ( blog | twitter ) was nice enough to snap a shot of me telling a Developer in the audience what I thought about how many steps it takes in PowerShell to use ADO.Net :-)

I’ll post some more details about the event later since I want to get this code out however while I’m at it I’d like to mention that:  For the first time in my short speaking career (and quite possibly the last) I had the largest audience of any session in my room. :-D :-D

Where is the Next SQL Saturday Coming From – Map

SQLSatKey Last night Andy Warren ( blog | twitter ) shot me an email and asked if I could come up with a map of all the cities in the US that haven’t held a SQL Saturday yet. Sadly, I love this kind of stuff so much that I knew right off the top of my head that in the US “cities” are broken down into “Metropolitan Statistical Areas” and there are 366 of them (I’m glossing over the 29 sub-areas of some of the big cities). I said Sadly because not only did I know that 366 number but I also cary a list of the 14 largest cities not to hold a SQL Saturday yet in my wallet.

In any event I figured I might as well generate a map of a more complete list of cities so I grabbed my handy-dandy copy of the 2009 Census estimates and I was off. I selected only the 100 largest cities and then removed any of the cities that had held or are planning a SQL Saturday. I was left with 62 cities most of which are at least an hour away from a city that has held a SQL Saturday. (The cities I didn’t remove aren’t among the 29 sub-areas of larger cities.**)

I fired up MapPoint 2010 to Link my data and discovered two things that I was really happy about. The first is that MapPoint recognizes Metropolitan Areas. This meant no parsing was required on my part. Secondly, since I had copied out the population figures with all of the cities, I was able to make the legend for my cities different based on the size of the population. While I was playing around with that I found out I can further scale that legend again based on how densely populated the area is.

This whole process literally took a handful of minutes.

Here is what the results tell us:

  • The largest section of under-served SQL Saturday areas is in a nice strip from St. Louis, MO to Providence, RI (Bragging rights go to Kansas City)
  • California is the most underserved state.
  • Texas really is bigger. Just look at the number of underserved folks who aren’t near Dallas or Houston
  • Despite 5 regular/annual SQL Saturdays in the state of Florida there are still 3 cities of note that are not within an hour of a SQL Saturday and are missing out.

image_map

Here’s a list if the top 25:

Rank Metropolitan Statistical Area Latest Population Estimate
13 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 4,317,853
14 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 4,143,113
18 St. Louis, MO-IL 2,828,990
20 Baltimore-Towson, MD 2,690,886
22 Pittsburgh, PA 2,354,957
24 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 2,171,896
25 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 2,127,355
28 San Antonio, TX 2,072,128
30 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 1,902,834
31 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1,839,700
34 Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 1,743,658
35 Austin-Round Rock, TX 1,705,075
36 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 1,674,498
37 Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 1,600,642
39 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 1,559,667
41 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 1,304,926
44 Oklahoma City, OK 1,227,278
45 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 1,195,998
46 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 1,189,981
50 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 1,123,804
51 Rochester, NY 1,035,566
52 Tucson, AZ 1,020,200
53 Tulsa, OK 929,015
54 Fresno, CA 915,267
55 Honolulu, HI 907,574

**You would think that since I started with 100 cities and ended up with 62 that means there are 38 cities that have held a SQL Saturday in the US but you’d be wrong. 2 cities that aren’t even in the top 100 largest cities in the US have held SQL Saturdays! So why isn’t your city in there?

Speaking at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville

image 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.

TailgatingI’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”
       

 

SQL Saturday #40 Code and Slides

IMG_1086I had a really great time at SQL Saturday #40 in South Florida. I was afraid the full day PowerShell track would really be short on attendees by the end of the day but it actually went much better than I expected! I will post a round-up here shortly but until then here are my scripts and slides from the weekend.

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