Training Event

Announcing the New PowerShell Virtual Chapter of PASS!

We are very excited to announce the new PowerShell Virtual Chapter of PASS! What is a Virtual Chapter? PASS Virtual Chapters are forums where SQL Server Professionals from around the world can communicate with others who have similar interests and face similar challenges. Think of it this way, PASS Chapters unite the SQL Server Community from a geographical perspective, Virtual Chapters unite the community based on common interests in a specific discipline.

What will the new PowerShell Virtual Chapter do? Our primary mission is holding Live Meetings every month featuring free training from around the world. We plan to archive the presentations for you to watch on demand and highlight articles and blogs that will interest our members. This Virtual Chapter is headed up by top professionals from around the US: Ben Miller ( blog | twitter ), Chad Miller [no relation that I’m aware of] ( blog | twitter ), Lars Rasmussen ( blog | twitter ), Peter Schott ( blog | twitter ), and Aaron Nelson ( blog | twitter ).

We will start things off next Wednesday with our first presentation. Here is the schedule through the end of the year. Smile We are currently looking for speakers for next year.

Wednesday October 20th 12 pm EDT (GMT-4) – Presenter Chad Miller
Wednesday November 17th 1 pm EST (GMT -5) – Presenter Aaron Nelson
Wednesday December 15th 1 pm EST (GMT -5) – Presenter Peter Schott

Chad Miller will get us started with an introduction to PowerShell as a command line for one-off tasks or automation in the DBA world. Basic PS principles and syntax will be covered. Get your proverbial DBA feet wet with a tool that can make your database and sysadmin life better than it was before! Bigger, stronger, faster. (Cue Bionic Man theme)

Chad Miller
Chad hails from the land of rocket launches, oranges, and alligators where he started the Tampa PowerShell User Group. Chad is the DBA for SQL Server and Manager of Database Administration for a shop supporting SQL Server, Oracle, and Informix, acts as coordinator for the SQL Server PowerShell Extensions CodePlex project, and maintains an active blog at http://sev17.com/author/chad-miller/ .

How do I attend? Registration for the event is now open.
*When you register you’ll get a calendar reminder for the event.

SQL MVP Denny Cherry Speaking at AtlantaMDF

Oct 7th, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

We’re excited to announce that SQL Server MVP Denny Cherry ( blog | twitter ) will be speaking at our next Atlanta MDF meeting!

Topic: Database Virtualization
We’ll be looking into the pros and cons of moving SQL Servers into a virtual server environment. Specifically we’ll be looking into when it’s a good idea and when it’s probably not a good idea. Like all problems in the database world there are no hard set answers as to if virtualization is a good idea, but there are some times when virtualizing a SQL Server is a good idea, and can save you some money. There are some other times when you will be shooting yourself in the foot and shouldn’t. We’ll be focusing on when how to make this decision, and how to gather the metrics that you need in order to come to this decision.

About Denny:
Denny Cherry has over a decade of experience managing SQL Server, including MySpace.com’s over 175 million user installation, one of the largest in the world. Denny’s areas of technical expertise include system architecture, performance tuning, replication and troubleshooting. Denny currently holds several Microsoft Certifications related to SQL Server as well as being a Microsoft MVP. Denny is a longtime member of PASS and Quest Software’s Association of SQL Server Experts and has written numerous technical articles on SQL Server management.

When:
Monday 10/11/2010 6:30 PM

Where:
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300, Alpharetta, GA 30004

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

Sep 29th, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

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.

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

Speaking About PowerShell at SQL Saturday in Raleigh

Sep 16th, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #46 in Raleigh this weekend! I’m really excited to be speaking at this event because I talked Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson ( blog | twitter ) into being a presenter too and take a wild guess what we’ll both be speaking about! It wasn’t really hard to get Ed to join us actually; I sent him a tweet saying something like ‘Hey Ed can you come out and speak to us SQL folks’ and his reply was ‘I’ll submit something tonight’. Might want to keep that in mind the next time that you’re looking for a speaker.

Take a look at the schedule and you’ll see that it’s packed with SQL Server experts so come on out and join
us, the football hasn’t gotten all that good yet so you’ve got no reason not to. Also, I have a new demo that Lee Holmes helped me get working that if you love to hate extracting data from Excel, this will make your life much simpler.

Start Time	Track 1	Track 2	Track 3	Track 4	Track 5	Track 6
8:30 AM	Andy Leonard Build Your First SSIS Package	Rafael Salas Dimensional Modeling: Why Should You Care?	Sergey Pustovit SQL Server Performance Related DMVs	Kevin Boles Common TSQL Programming Mistakes*	Flavio Almeida Self-Service BI with PowerPivot	Geoff Hiten Clustering for Mere Mortals
9:45 AM	John Welch Processing Flat Files with SSIS	Mark Tabladillo Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010	Jana Sattainathan Partitioning in SQL Server 2005/2008	Tim Chapman How, where, why, and when to use Dynamic SQL	Jessica Moss Who Needs a Data Warehouse?	Aaron Nelson The Dirty Dozen: PowerShell Scripts for Busy DBAs
11:00 AM	Chris Skorlinski Introduction to Change Data Capture	Mark Tabladillo Document Classification using DMX in SSAS	Andrew Kelly Maximizing Plan Re-use in SQL 2008	Kevin Goode Embracing the CLR	Mike Davis Reporting Services 2008 R2, the New Stuff	Brian Kelley Fortress SQL Server
12:00 PM					SQL Saturday Red Gate Software
01:00 PM	John Welch Patterns for SSIS Configuration and Deployment	William Pearson Attribute Discretization in Analysis Services	Grant Fritchey Identifying and Fixing Performance Problems using	Andy Leonard Database Design for Developers	Jason Hall Recipe for a Happy DBA – A Guide for SQL Server De	Ed Wilson Windows PowerShell Best Practices for SQL DBA’s
02:15 PM	Andy Leonard SSIS Design Patterns	Steve Wright The Shade Tree Mechanic’s Guide to SSAS	Thomas LaRock Performance Tuning Made Easy	Allen White XQuery Basics	Geoff Hiten Bad SQL	Brian Kelley The Dirty Business of Auditing
3:30 PM	Chris Skorlinski Integrating CDC and SSIS for Incremental Data Load	Mike Davis Using Parameters in SQL Server Reporting Services	Kevin Goode Statistics, how to prove everything but the truth.	Kevin Boles Advanced TSQL Solutions	SQL Saturday Q & A — Stump the Speakers	Amy Styers Virtualizing SQL Best Practices
4:30 PM					SQL Saturday SWAG Give Away

Early September Free Training from PASS VCs

Sep 3rd, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

Introduction to SQL Server Statistics
Designing High Performance I/O for SQL Server
Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010
_____________________________________________________________

Introduction to SQL Server Statistics
September 7th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -4)
Presenter: Andy Warren

This beginner to intermediate level session will introduce you to statistics, including how to create, manage, troubleshoot, and more! Statistics are a key part of getting solid and repeatable performance and is easily just as important as having indexes. Whether you’re a DBA or trying to get by without one, this session will give you the information you need to know.

Andy Warren

Andy Warren is a SQL trainer focusing on basic administration and performance tuning, he runs the free SQLShare.com training site, is currently a SQL Server MVP, blogs daily at SQLAndy.com, started the SQLSaturday franchise, is co-President of the Orlando SQL Server Users Group, serves as a member of the Board of Directors of PASS, and was a founding partner in SQLServerCentral.com. In his remaining free time he’s working on a book for first time managers.

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=2CHB5C&role=attend&pw=W%5Dw5%22K45B

_____________________________________________________________

Designing High Performance I/O for SQL Server
September 8th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -6)
Presenter: Jimmy May

This session attempts to describe the “full story” of SQL Server I/O. We will start at the hardware level working our way up the stack through Windows and into the SQL Server storage engine. I aim to provide in depth information about all aspects related to the fundamentals of high performance storage design for SQL Server and best practices on this complex subject.

Jimmy May

Jimmy is a Sr. Program Manager for the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team. He is the manager of the SQL Server Customer Lab where customers from around the world bring the biggest, fastest, & most interesting SQL Server apps for tuning. He is a founder of both the Indiana Windows User Group (http://www.iwug.net) and Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (http://www.indypass.org). Jimmy recently moved to Redmond from Indianapolis, Indiana with his lovely bride, Phyllis, and Fannie May the Wonder Dog. Subscribe to and read his SQL Server performance and personal productivity blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay. Contact him at jimmymay@microsoft.com or aspiringgeek@live.com. Jimmy is also part of the rich & robust SQL Server community on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aspiringgeek.

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join?id=S29G25&role=attend
_____________________________________________________________

Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010
September 8th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -4)
Presenter: Mark Tabladillo

Excel provides a compelling and ubiquitous interface for Microsoft Data Mining. With new features available through PowerPivot, business users can apply the technology through a well-designed infrastructure of Microsoft technologies. This presentation will welcome any newcomers to data mining, and provide interactive demos which highlight data mining through these technologies.

Mark Tabladillo

Mark provides consulting and training for data mining with Solid Quality Mentors. He has taught statistics at Georgia Tech and for the graduate business school of the University of Phoenix. In addition to his Microsoft certifications (MCAD .NET and MCT), Mark has years of deep experience with the SAS System, and has presented at many local, regional, and national technical conferences. Mark produces a data mining resource and blog at http://www.marktab.net

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=2J4ZPD&role=attend&pw=8QN%40qdzgQ

Columbus and Edmonton Code and Slides

Aug 26th, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

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.

Atlanta B/I User Group Meeting

Aug 23rd, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

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

Aug 18th, 2010

by Aaron Nelson.

Comments are off for this post

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”

Training Event

Announcing the New PowerShell Virtual Chapter of PASS!

SQL MVP Denny Cherry Speaking at AtlantaMDF

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

Speaking About PowerShell at SQL Saturday in Raleigh

Early September Free Training from PASS VCs

Columbus and Edmonton Code and Slides

Atlanta B/I User Group Meeting

Speaking at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville

Schedule

Search

Categories

Archives

Recent Comments

Search

Idera SQL Server (ACE) Advisors & Community Educators

Training Event

Schedule

Search

Tags

Categories

Archives

Recent Comments

Search

Idera SQL Server (ACE) Advisors & Community Educators