Search results matching tag 'Conference'

Not selected as a speaker at PASS Summit 2013 #sqlpass #sqlfamily

sqlbi — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:05:00 GMT

I received the communication from the PASS Program Committee that none of my proposal have been accepted at PASS Summit 2013. Probably this year there was too many proposals and I made a mistake not using all the possible proposals available per speaker. In fact, I just proposed one pre-conference day and two regular sessions:

From 0 to DAX (preconference)
DAX is the new language for creating Business Intelligence in the Microsoft stack. You can use it to query and program both Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2013 and the new SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular model. Learning the basics of DAX is very simple, but mastering it is a different story because it requires a mindset that involves some study, both for BI Professionals and Information Workers.
During this one-day workshop, we will guide you in the process of learning the DAX language, through many examples and scenarios that help you understand what are the important concepts of DAX and how to leverage them in your everyday work.
The seminar is useful to many profiles: BI developers who want to learn the DAX language and information workers interested in exploiting the many interesting features of PowerPivot for Excel 2013.
Optimizing Data Models in Tabular & PowerPivot (regular session)
Is your new Tabular solution performing at its best? Are you using the best practices to reduce memory footprint, increase query speed and get the best out of the new engine? In this session, we will look at several techniques that can really make the difference in a Tabular solution. Distinct count reduction, join optimizations, condition consolidation, pros and cons of normalized data models, selection of the columns to store in the database are some of the topics covered in this session, which will highlight not only the best practices, but also practices that were best in Multidimensional and became worst in Tabular. As we are used to teach: if you known Multidimensional, you need to forget it in order to let the new concepts of Tabular shape your model.
Time Intelligence with DAX (regular session)
Time Intelligence is probably the most used feature of any analytical solution. Computing Year To Date, Month To Date, Same Period Previous Year is quite easy in DAX. However, the DAX formulas start to be harder to write as soon as the requests for time intelligence involve working days evaluation, complex and custom calendar shapes, seasonal pattern recognition, ISO-based weeks handling, 445 fiscal calendar.
In this session, we start showing how to compute the classical time intelligence by using the built-in DAX functions. Then, we will see some more complex time-intelligence formulas that require thinking out of the box, using advanced data modeling and querying techniques to produce interesting and useful formulas.

I have been informed that this year a new selection process has taken place. Abstracts reviews and speakers reviews have been made by two separate teams, and a final judgment has been made by combining the two ratings. In particular, abstracts team didn’t know the speaker’s name of each session. It seems a smart way to handle 850 submission in a transparent way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of this new process.

In the last years, I and Alberto Ferrari had too many sessions selected, so the board decided to assign us only a few of them and the selected ones wasn’t always the best ones (because it wasn’t possible for us to establish an order of preference in case more submissions were selected). For this reason, this year we limited our submissions to the sessions that were more likely to be interesting, considering the current request on the market, the questions we received usually and the need to avoid presenting something already presented in the previous year. So we made a small selection of sessions avoiding to submit the maximum number of sessions per speaker. But this has been a wrong choice, because based on the new evaluation system, it would have been certainly better to propose more sessions and not only in the area in which we are most specialized.

I am not saying I have proposed sessions that was better than others selected. I have seen the proposals here and there are very interesting sessions (I still don’t know which ones have been selected at the moment of writing). I would have just proposed at least other 2 regular sessions more advanced and focused on specific use cases. Being part of a board selecting sessions in other conferences (like this) I know that every selection process has some drawbacks and the best thing you can do is to communicate very well how the selection process will work, so that everybody is able to help the board producing the best proposals. I thought that proposing a lower number of session would have been better, but I was wrong.

Well, I have been a speaker at PASS Summit in the last 4 years in a row (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), so it’s probably time to take some rest from speaking!

Pre-Conference Seminar about DAX at TechEd 2013 #msteched #dax #ssas

sqlbi — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:24:00 GMT

If you are using Microsoft BI stack and you still didn’t start learning DAX, you should not wait any longer. One of the option you have is starting with one of our books, or you can also attend one of our workshop about Tabular or PowerPivot. But if you are planning to go to SQLBits or TechEd, you might also consider attending a full day about DAX, following the From 0 to DAX one-day seminar. Here are the links:

SQLBits – From 0 to DAX Training Day (Nottingham, UK - May 2, 2013)
TechEd North America – From 0 to DAX Pre-Conference Seminar (New Orleans, LA - June 2, 2013)
TechEd Europe – From 0 to DAX Pre-Conference Seminar (Madrid, Spain - June 24, 2013)

Take a look at Early Bird expiration date – you can save a good portion of your budget by registering within March 22, 2013 at any of TechEd conference. For SQLBits there is a discounted price until April 7, 2013.

Even if I’m not blogging much in these weeks, I can assure you we are working on more DAX content that we’ll publish in the next months. Stay tuned!

Discount for PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013 #passbac #ssas #sqlpass

sqlbi — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:02:00 GMT

One month ago I wrote about my sessions at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, in Chicago, IL on April 10-12, 2013. If you still have not registered, you can save $200 by using the code BAC228BL and you should hurry up, because there is another discount if you register within March 15, 2013.

If you are too lazy to click on the previous post, I will speech in two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy
Self-Service Data Modeling

And now that Data Explorer Preview has been made public I can disclose that Data Explorer will be covered in my Self-Service Data Modeling session! I thought about writing an article about Data Explorer, but there is already a good coverage and I suggest you to read these blogs:

Introduction to Data Explorer Preview for Excel by Jason Thomas
Several posts by Chris Webb
Announcement on Data Explorer Team blog

SQLBits XI in May 2013 – many reasons to attend! #sqlbits #dax #tabular

sqlbi — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:33:00 GMT

I and Alberto Ferrari will speak at SQLBits XI (Nottingham, UK – May 2-4, 2013) and there are many good reasons to join us there, especially if you are interested to DAX!

Here are our sessions:

Thursday, 02 May 2013 – Training Day - From 0 to DAX

The entire day is dedicated to learning DAX, starting from the syntax and going forward with more complex syntaxes for both expressions and queries in DAX.
Technical level: the goal is to be introductive, explaining the important concepts in DAX (such as filter context, row context, context transitions) and covering the usage of the most common DAX functions.
Target audience: Information Workers interested in exploiting the many interesting features of PowerPivot for Excel 2013 and BI developers who want to learn the DAX language.
In practice: if you started using DAX two years ago and created several projects in Tabular and/or PowerPivot with complex calculations, this is not the workshop for you (read about an Advanced DAX Workshop later in this post). But if you just started your first Tabular or PowerPivot projects and you are still wondering what CALCULATE is all about, then this is definitely the right training for you!

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 10:50am – Modern Data Warehousing Strategy

How to design a Data Warehouse in 2013? Should we change something considering the introduction of in-memory technologies such as xVelocity? Is Self-Service BI affecting the way we design and implement a Corporate Data Warehouse?
This is not a session about a specific feature of a product, but features and products have their effects on the data warehouse design. We’ll stop one hour trying to understand what changes in the big picture, affecting also our day-by-day job.

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 2:40pm – Inside xVelocity InMemory Engine (VertiPaq)

Do you use PowerPivot and/or Analysis Services Tabular? They use the same engine (xVelocity/VertiPaq) and you should know how it works.
This session will show how xVelocity/VertiPaq works, how it compresses and stores data and why it is so fast answering to your queries.
Why this is important? Because it is geeky! And because this knowledge will help you optimizing storage and DAX queries.

Saturday, 04 May 2013 – 10:50am – DAX Query Engine Internals

DAX is amazingly fast. But some query might be not fast enough.
Do you want to know how to optimize your DAX query? This session is for you.
Knowing the internals of xVelocity InMemory engine is just the first step (see Friday’s session). Then you need to apply this knowledge to DAX and understand why different DAX syntaxes for the same result might have different performance.
Understanding cross-filtering is a key to master DAX optimization. The more you know DAX, the more you will appreciate this session!

As I said before, the training day is an introductive course. If you already know DAX and want to improve your skills, there is a 3-day Advanced DAX Workshop I will teach in London on May 13-15, 2013. It could be also a good reason to visit London if you come from other countries!

Now that we are almost done with the PowerPivot for Excel 2013 book, we will write more articles – stay tuned!

First spring conference: PASS Business Analytics Conference and SQL Bits #passbac #sqlbits #sqlpass

sqlbi — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:50:00 GMT

Spring is a conferences’ season and the upcoming one is no exception. I will be speaking at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, which will be the first event this year, so I’d like to spend a few words about my sessions.

PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013
April 10-12, 2013 | Chicago, IL – United States

This conference is targeted to Business Analytics professionals. Thus, I expect to meet both BI Developers, Excel Advanced Users, Data Analyst and, of course, the new Data Scientist role (if you have a business card with such a definition, please drop me one, so I can demonstrate to skeptic people that this figure actually exists!). I have two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy

April 11th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Chicago Ballroom VIII
Track: Strategy and Architecture
The recent introduction of new technologies such as PowerPivot, the BI Semantic Model, and columnstore indexes in SQL Server and advances in self-service business intelligence and big data might be considered threats to the classic data warehouse ecosystem. In reality, a good data warehouse is still the best starting point for any kind of analysis, but we do need to update our strategy for data warehouse implementation to fit the requirements of this new era. This session will start the conversation about what a modern strategy for data warehousing can and should be. What type of data modeling should we use for the data warehouse? What is the role of data marts? Does the use of technologies such as PowerPivot or Analysis Services Tabular affect the way we should model our data? Do columnstore indexes remove the need for an analytical server like Analysis Services? We will discuss these and other questions, offering an updated approach to the data warehouse modeling methodology.

Self-Service Data Modeling

April 12th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Sheraton Ballroom I & II
Track: Data Analytics and Visualization
Self-service business intelligence looks promising, empowering information workers to grab amazing insights from data. But are Excel 2013 and DAX language knowledge enough to analyze data? The answer in most cases is no – information workers will also need an ability to properly model their data and the skill to use some new tools to reshape data in the correct way. In this session, we will analyze some common problem scenarios where data analysis is difficult due to the shape of the model and see how to solve them.

In theory, I expect two different audiences at the two sessions, but I know that there will be people attending both, especially who provides tools to end users. I’d like to receive feedback about what you would expect to see in such sessions (regardless you will attend or not!), so that I check if I defined the correct expectations for the audience.

If you want to attend, register before March 15 in order to get a discounted price. You can also save $200 by using the code BAC228BL. See you in Chicago!

Bleeding Edge 2012 – session material

Hugo Kornelis — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 10:46:00 GMT

As promised, here are the slide deck and demo code I used for my presentation at the Bleeding Edge 2012 conference in Laško, Slovenia. Okay, I promised to have them up by Tuesday or Wednesday at worst, and it is now Saturday – my apologies for the delay.

Thanks again to all the attendees of my session. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any question then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

I had a great time in Slovenia, both during the event and in the after hours. Even if everything the tour guide said during the tour of the Laško brewery was lost on me (in his defense, he did offer to translate the Slovenian explanations to Russian), I still liked it – especially the part where we got to sample some of the produce!

I truly hope that there will be another Bleeding Edge conference next year. And if there is, I definitely want to speak there again!

SQLRally Nordic 2012 – session material

Hugo Kornelis — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:49:00 GMT

As some of you might know, I have been to SQLRally Nordic 2012 in Copenhagen earlier this week. I was able to attend many interesting sessions, I had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting new people, and I was allowed to present a session myself.

I understand that the PowerPoint slides and demo code I used in my session will be made available through the SQLRally website – but I don’t know how long it will take the probably very busy volunteers to do so. And I promised my attendees to make them available through my blog as well.

So, here they are, for everyone to download, see, and play with. Though, in all honesty, I expect people who were not present at my session to get very little out of this material.

(I’m not sure, but I *think* that the SQLRally organization will also make a recording of my session available. If that is true, then once it’s up the slides and demo code should make a lot more sense to anyone who is able to view the recording).

I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t repeat this often enough – thanks to everyone involved with the organization of SQLRally for creating a truly wonderful event, and thanks to all the attendees who took the time and energy to come to my session and listen to me.

LASTDATE dates arguments and upcoming events #dax #tabular #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:04:00 GMT

Recently I had to write a DAX formula containing a LASTDATE within the logical condition of a FILTER: I found that its behavior was not the one I expected and I further investigated. At the end, I wrote my findings in this article on SQLBI, which can be applied to any Time Intelligence function with a <dates> argument.

The key point is that when you write

LASTDATE( table[column] )

in reality you obtain something like

LASTDATE( CALCULATETABLE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

which converts an existing row context into a filter context.

Thus, if you have something like

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( table[column] )

the FILTER will return all the rows of table, whereas you probably want to use

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

so that the existing filter context before executing FILTER is used to get the result from VALUES( table[column] ), avoiding the automatic expansion that would include a CALCULATETABLE that would hide the existing filter context.

If after reading the article you want to get more insights, read the Jeffrey Wang's post here.

In these days I'm speaking at SQLRally Nordic 2012 in Copenhagen and I will be in Cologne (Germany) next week for a SSAS Tabular Workshop, whereas Alberto will teach the same workshop in Amsterdam one week later. Both workshops still have seats available and the Amsterdam's one is still in early bird discount until October 3rd!

Then, in November I expect to meet many blog readers at PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle and I hope to find the time to write other article on interesting things on Tabular and PowerPivot. Stay tuned!

Upcoming speaking engagements – want to meet me?

Hugo Kornelis — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:28:00 GMT

I have a very busy time ahead of me, with lots of travel, lots of speaking engagements, and hence lots of opportunity to meet and catch up with what has become known as the SQL Family. (An excellent term, by the way – it describes exactly how it has always felt to me!)

So, for everyone who want to know when and where they can meet me (as well as for everyone who wants to make sure to stay as far away from me as possible), here is my schedule for the rest of the year, in chronological order:

· September 8, SQL Saturday #162, Cambridge, England. I will be presenting on Columnstore Indexes. I have given that presentation before, a.o. at SQL Bits, in a 75-minute time slot – and I had enough material to fill two of those slots. In Cambridge, I have only 50 minutes for my presentation, so that will be a challenge!

· September 15, SQL Saturday #170, Munich, Germany. Here I will deliver a presentation on the MERGE statement. Also a session that I have presented before (in Portugal and in the Netherlands), but I plan to invest some time to improve and perfect the session.

· October 1-3, SQL Rally Nordic, Copenhagen, Denmark. In Copenhagen, I will present a session on the dangers of user-defined functions. This session is of course inspired by my current blog-series-in-progress. For the title of the session, I had two ideas. The final title is “The evils of user-defined functions”, but the other contender was “User-defined functions, or how to kill performance in one easy step”. I hope that gives you an idea of what to expect!

· November 3, SQL Saturday #172, Portland, OR, United States of America. The schedule has not yet been announced, so I have no idea if one of my sessions will be chosen. But even if I am not presenting, I will be there, meeting old and new friends, attending other people’s sessions, and making a nuisance out of myself by asking just the right question at just the wrong time. Or, if one of my sessions is picked, I will be presenting myself, and you all can make a nuisance out of yourself by asking the wrong question at just the right time.

· November 5-9, PASS Summit 2012, Seattle, WA, United States of America. The biggest of the bunch. After a few years where I was either absent or a regular attendee, PASS has decided to try their luck with me as a speaker again this year. They, too, have chosen to let me speak about the MERGE statement. Obviously, I will improve my slides and demo code even further after delivering this session in Munich, so I hope to really rock the stage!

· November 10, SQL Saturday #166, Olympia, WA, United States of America. Since I am in the neighborhood anyway, I decided to stick around one more day and go to this fine SQL Saturday event. I submitted the same sessions I also submitted for the Portland event, and they have given me the same feedback (i.e., none yet). In other words, I don’t know yet if I’ll be speaking or what I’ll be speaking about, but I will be there, even if I am not elected as a speaker.

For those of you who desperately want to see me in real life (honestly? why??) but are not able to make it to any of the above events, there is still hope! Because, as long as it already is, the list above is still incomplete. There are two more events that will take place in 2012 and where I might be speaking. Yes, “might be” – in one case, it is almost certain, but I’ll still keep quiet until the schedule is officially announced. In the other case, I first have to work out some issues in the schedule of myself and my family before I can commit myself to going there – and once that is worked out, I will still keep quiet about that one too until the speakers for the event are officially announced.

So with at least six and possibly eight (or more? my mail is open to anyone who is organizing events!) speaking engagements for the rest of the year, there is every chance for you to run into me. Are you going to one or more of the listed events? In that case, I hope you’ll come to my sessions. But whether you do, or pick a competing session, I hope even more that you will take the time to step up to me, introduce yourself, and chat.

I am looking forward to meeting you all!

Slides and demo code for Columnstore Index session

Hugo Kornelis — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:58:00 GMT

Almost a week has passed after SQLBits X in London, so I guess it’s about time for me to share the slides and demo code of my session on columnstore indexes. After all, I promised people I would do that – especially when I found out that I had enough demos prepared to fill two sessions!

I made some changes to the demo code. I added extra comments, not only to the demos I could not explain and run during the session, but also to the rest, so that people who missed the session will also be able to benefit. I also found and fixed the error that caused one of my demos to fail. It turned out to be as embarrassing as it was unspectacular – somewhere along the way, I must have accidentally fat-fingered the backspace button while the cursor was on the name of an index. And if the index name doesn’t match, queries against index-related DMVs tend to produce no results. <sigh>

After fixing this typo, I re-ran all demos and they now worked flawlessly.

One major catch (and those who were in my session already know this). I ran my demos on a database that I got from within Microsoft, and I have no permission to redistribute this database. That means that people can only study the code, but not run it – well, okay, they can run it, on the “small” version of the database and table (change database names AdventureWorks2008DWXL and AdventureWorks2008DWBig to AdventureWorks2008DW, and change table names FactResellerSalesXL and FactResellerSalesPart to FactResellerSales), but with the size of that table, I expect the optimizer to make completely different choices for the execution plans. So while you can’t see the actual performance benefit by running the code yourself, you can still learn the patterns to use to work around the many limitations of columnstore indexes and batch mode.

I normally prefer to use demo code that any attendee can replicate on their own test databases, but in this case, I simply did not have the time to make a realistic 100+-million row table, and I did not want to demonstrate columnstore indexes on an unrealistic and heavily skewed table or on a table that is too small to show the performance benefit.