Davide Mauri : PASS, Business Intelligence

Agile Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2012 Q&A

Davide Mauri — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:38:33 GMT

Yesterday has been published my Q&A interview on my Pre-Conference Workshop at SQL Pass 2012. It’s a good way to understand what will be discussed in the workshop, so if you’re interested or you’re into the Data Warehouse / Business Intelligence field and want to understand how the Agile approach can help you, you can read it here:

http://bit.ly/PASS2012DMInterview

PASS Summit Preconference and Sessions

Davide Mauri — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 08:41:10 GMT

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be delivering a Pre-Conference at PASS Summit 2012. I’ll speak about Business Intelligence again (as I did in 2010) but this time I’ll focus only on Data Warehouse, since it’s big topic even alone. I’ll discuss not only what is a Data Warehouse, how it can be modeled and built, but also how it’s development can be approached using and Agile approach, bringing the experience I gathered in this field.

Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=2821

I’m sure you’ll like it, especially if you’re starting to create a BI Solution and you’re wondering what is a Data Warehouse, if it is still useful nowadays that everyone talks about Self-Service BI and In-Memory databases, and what’s the correct path to follow in order to have a successful project up and running.

Beside this Preconference, I’ll also deliver a regular session, this time related to database administration, monitoring and tuning:

DMVs: Power in Your Hands
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3204

Here we’ll dive into the most useful DMVs, so that you’ll see how that can help in everyday management in order to discover, understand and optimze you SQL Server installation, from the server itself to the single query.

See you there!!!!!

PASS Summit 2011 – Slides & Demos

Davide Mauri — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:13:22 GMT

Just reading from all posts and tweets it’s quite clear that this year’s PASS has been a great success. Despite of the bad cold that I had from Monday , I’ve enjoyed it at lot. All the parties, the friends, the community and the great content make PASS an appointment one that should not to be missed.

I’ve also enjoyed a lot delivering “Temporal Snapshot Fact Table” session. From the feedback I had attendees enjoyed it too .

All the related material will be soon available here

Temporal Snapshot Fact Table [BIA-406-S]
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2011/Speakers/CallForSpeakers/SessionDetail.aspx?sid=1115

and here

Upgrading SSIS to Denali - Management Considerations and Best Practices [BIA-311-S]
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2011/Speakers/CallForSpeakers/SessionDetail.aspx?sid=1762

For all those who cannot wait to download the slides and the demos from PASS website, I’ve uploaded everything on my SkyDrive folder. If you need them just send me an email, I’ll be happy to send the public link to you

PASS Summit 2010 BI Workshop: Slides & Demos available to all attendees

Davide Mauri — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:16:25 GMT

I’ve just released on SkyDrive (http://bit.ly/ghPeaa) all the demo material I’ve used in my BI Workshop at the PASS Summit. The zip file also contains the DLPC tool and the latest revision of the slide deck (only some minor syntax errors corrected).

As the related “Readme.txt” file says, the zip file is protected with a password. The password is simply the first point of the agenda (All attendees received the printed version of the slide deck. The agenda is in the third slide).

Enjoy!

Back from PASS 2010

Davide Mauri — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:22:05 GMT

I’ve returned from PASS 2010 on late sunday and yesterday I spent pretty much of the time just catching up with all the ongoing projects. I’ll probably need some more days on this, but for the beginning of the next week I’ll be able to answer all the email received that concerns PASS Summit and also put online the latest updated demos so that all attendees to my workshop can download it. The latest version of the slide deck is available from the PASS Website.

I’ve enjoyed PASS 2010 soooo much. I would really like to thanks all the people that attended to my workshop for all their great feedbacks. I’m really glad that the idea of “engineering” the whole BI process has been so much appreciated! Btw if you also want to “rate me” , you can do it using the usual speaker reate service:

http://speakerrate.com/talks/5101-creating-a-bi-solution-from-a-to-z

Now it’s time to go back to the “usual” work again…..

“Adaptive BI: Engineering a BI Solution” slides available

Davide Mauri — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:09:45 GMT

Many thanks to all who attented to my webcast on Monday. I really appreciated your feedbacks and I already got some very interesting suggestion that I’ll surely implement.

If you have more feedbacks you can leave them here:

http://speakerrate.com/talks/4577-adaptive-bi-engineering-a-bi-solution

I must say that I would have liked to have more time to do the demo, but via Livemeeting seems to me that time goes MUCH faster and so I arrived near the end of the session with few time left for a proper demonstration of my “Dimension Loader Package Generator” tool. For this reason I’m preparing a set of small screencast that will show it in action, since also for this little tool I’d like to have your feedbacks.

Ah yes, before I forget :), slides are available here:

http://www.slideshare.net/yorek/adaptive-bi-engineering-a-bi-solution

Finally, for all those who asked: the Workshop I’ll be delivering at PASS will show how one can create a BI solution putting in place all the rules I’ve shown, so that the solution will be almost self-documenting, solid, clean, formal but still adaptive.

A public version of “Dimension Loader Package Generator” will be make available at PASS Summit.

PASS Workshop “Creating a BI solution from A to Z” - Interview

Davide Mauri — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:16:27 GMT

If you’re still unsure if the workshop I’ll deliver at PASS Summit the next November - “Creating a BI solution from A to Z” - is a good choice for you or not, you can get some more details reading the brief interview here:

PASS Summit Post-Con Preview - Davide Mauri

Where you’ll find answers to the following questions:

Is there an audience that would benefit especially from this session?
After having attended your seminar, what are two or three things that an attendee will be able to take back to the office and put to use right away?
What background should attendees ideally have to be fully prepared for your seminar?
What experience are you, as a speaker, bringing to this session?

That may help you to take your final decision. More than 20 people already decided to come: you’ll be in good company! :)

PASS Summit 2010 – BI Workshop

Davide Mauri — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:01:10 GMT

PASS Summit 2010 Pre & Post conference are out! This year I’ll deliver the “Creating BI Solution from A to Z” seminar in which, as the title implies, attendees will see how to create a BI solution starting from scratch. Going through the dimensional modeling and the creation of the Datawarehouse, the implementation of the ETL process with SSIS, the creation of cube with Analysis Services and reports with Reporting Services with, if time permits, also a glance at PowerPivot, attendees will get a solid ground on the whole process that drives the creation of a BI solution.

The workshop will also show all the best practices and the best methodological approach matured in more than 5 years of working in the BI field.

If you’ll be working on BI or you already have a created an initial BI solution and you want to be sure you’re following the right path, this is workshop is for you!

Don’t miss it!

Back from PASS Europe 2010

Davide Mauri — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:24:04 GMT

PASS Europe 2010 is finished and I’m now finally back at home and will stay here for a while.

I would like to thanks all the people who has come to my sessions for all their feedback, especially for the “Adaptive BI” session!

Slides and demos should be available for download from the PASS European Conference website in a couple of days.

Meanwhile if you want to rate my session online, you can do it here:

Adaptive BI
http://speakerrate.com/talks/3136-adaptive-bi-best-practices

Blazing Fast Queries
http://speakerrate.com/talks/3135-blazing-fast-queries-when-indexes-are-not-enough

A week in Seattle

Davide Mauri — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:02:00 GMT

Tomorrow morning I’ll fly to Seattle for the usual PASS Community Summit. I’m really happy for the next week. Even if this period is really full of work and a week away means that at my return I’ll have *really* busy times, the PASS Conference is always a nice break: meeting old and new friends, learning new things, enjoying beers and cocktails and dinners, and, of course, plan and look ahead into the future. Yes I’m really looking forward to be there.

In addition, this year, if you’re into Business Intelligence or Data Integration you’d better not miss my session, dedicated to some of the most common problems and requirements: logging, monitoring and auditing.

Instrumenting, Monitoring and Auditing of SSIS ETL Solutions

Have you ever been struck by the lack of detailed logging available within SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages? If the answer to this question is yes, then you are probably a seasoned Business Intelligence solutions builder. The packages that make up your solutions probably contain extra code to facilitate effective monitoring, control and profiling. However, increasingly, SSIS is being used to unify data found on disparate yet related transactional systems. The batch processes that perform this activity thus become a vital part of the information processing ecosystem. These need to be monitored and profiled in the same way as formal BI solutions but often the resources available are much more meager. What do you do when something goes wrong and the functionality of the packages is not transparent via internal state reporting. This session will introduce you to an improved version of DTExec. By passing the appropriate state flags it can reveal the internal activity of packages without having to make any changes to the packages themselves.

Here’s a sneak peak of what you’ll be able to obtain from your SSIS Packages, after coming to my session, without the needing to write a single line of code or change existing packages:

See you there!