Next Thursday, May 8, the New England SQL Server Users Group will have a special meeting, featuring Craig Freedman from the SQL Server development team.  Craig is The Man when it comes to query optimizer internals, and wrote an incredibly detailed chapter on the topic for "Inside SQL Server 2005: Query Tuning and Optimization".

At the meeting next week, Craig will discuss some of what he talked about in the chapter, including the basics of how the query processor works and what iterators are.  He'll cover the various operators you'll commonly see in query plans, and describe how they actually work internally. 

This should be a great meeting, and we expect it to be very well attended.  In order to help us figure out food and drink, in addition to securing enough chairs for the meeting room, we need you to RSVP if you're planning to attend.  In order to RSVP, sign up for our mailing list.  I will send out an e-mail next Tuesday, and you can RSVP by replying to it.  Only attendees who RSVP will be eligible for our prize draw at the end of the night, so make sure to sign up for our list by Monday in order to guarantee that you don't get left out.

We would like to thank Red Gate Software, who made a very generous donation to the group that allowed us to have this special meeting.  Red Gate makes some of my favorite SQL Server tools and provides a huge amount of community support in the SQL Server and .NET space, and we hope that you will give their products a try.