Search results matching tags 'SQL Server 2012' and 'Community'

Blogging from the PASS Summit : Nov. 7th keynote

AaronBertrand — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:40:00 GMT

Bill Graziano takes the stage at 8:15. He talks about how 3,894 attendees (and 5,611 total registrants) represent 57 countries at the 14th summit. There are over 127,000 members worldwide.

Note that you can watch the keynotes and many sessions through Pass TV.

PASS serves SQL Server community - expertise, support, commitment. He talks about SQL Saturdays, SQL Rally, 24 Hours of PASS, and the Summit. He announces that there will be a third annual SQL Rally Nordic event next November, and that there will have been 543,000 hours of training delivered to the community in 2012.

PASS is delivering its first Business Analytics Conference, April 10-12, 2013, in Chicago.

A lot of people think PASS Summit is about a bunch of sessions. There are also other resources here, such as the SQL Server Clinic (4C3), Developer Chalk Talks (4C4), Hands-On Labs (304), Focus Groups, a Solutions Theater, and even on-site MS Certifications. And don't forget about all of the social interaction and conversations that happen outside of these formal settings.

SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1

Ted Kummert takes the stage. He talks about SQL Server 2012 and announces the general availability of Service Pack 1. (You can download SP1 here - it's build # 11.0.3000.) There is already a "What's New" article on MSDN.

Hekaton - In-Memory for OLTP

He finally let the cat out of the bag about Hekaton (greek for "100x" - implying 100x performance improvement), an in-memory transactional engine that will ship in the next major version of SQL Server. We've known about this technology for at least 18 months, but were sworn to secrecy (though there were a few slips, e.g. on Connect and this blog post). Shawn Bice demonstrates a tool that identifies tables that are great candidates for in-memory optimization (trading CPU for latches), and helps you migrate them to in-memory tables with no changes to applications.

Anyone remember <code>DBCC PINTABLE</code>? This is NOT that. Paul Randal liked <code>DBCC PINTABLE</code> about as much as he likes shrinking databases.

The tool will also identify stored procedures that can be memory-optimized - essentially re-compiling the procedure so that it runs natively in memory. The big thing here is there is no re-learning and no re-writing of application code to take advantage of this in-memory technology. Very exciting stuff.

ColumnStore Improvements

Shawn also shows a demo of ColumnStore (which they're going out of their way to label "xVelocity ColumnStore"), which we've all seen, but he talks about two great enhancements in SQL Server vNext: ColumnStore being updatable (finally!), and the clustered index on a table being eligible for ColumnStore.

My take: If you weren't excited about SQL Server 2012, you should certainly be excited about the next version of SQL Server.

SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse

The new version, scheduled for H1 2013, will use Windows Server 2012 (Storage Spaces), updateable and clustered xVelocity Columnstore indexes, an updated distributed query processor, and offers totally redundant appliances with up to 40 nodes.

Christian Kleinerman comes up and demonstrates the new admin console and "insanely fast" queries. He does a COUNT(*) query over 294 billion rows (over 1 Petabyte) sub-second, and a much more complex query using the ColumnStore clustered index over the entire table returns in less than 2 seconds. Space savings with ColumnStore clustered index is 5x-15x.

PolyBase

New technology allowing users to query over both relational and Hadoop data through PDW. New syntax: <code>CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE ... WITH (LOCATION = 'hdfs://.../whatever.tbl');</code> Then you can join against this Hadoop source just like you would any other table. More info at http://gsl.azurewebsites.net/Projects/Polybase.aspx

Excel 2013

Amir Netz comes up and talks about movies. Shocking. He demonstrates the ease of using PowerView, PowerPivot and insightful visualization within Excel. The first demo to get applause was turning the data into a map - a scrolling, zoomable map, with pie charts, tooltips and legends - again entirely inside Excel.

Ted's high-level blog post about these announcements:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/11/07/accelerating-insights-in-the-new-world-of-data.aspx

Also see Jen Stirrup's great overview post here:

http://www.jenstirrup.com/2012/11/microsoft-sql-server-2012-latest.html

Want to Learn SQL Server 2012?

andyleonard — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Or SSIS 2012? SSRS 2012? SSAS 2012? There’s no substitute for getting your hands on the product, in my opinion.

I can hear you thinking, “But Andy, I can’t afford to purchase a copy of SQL Server 2012.” Are you sure? What if I told you that you can get a full-feature version of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition for $50? Well, you cannot… it’s actually less than $50! SQL Server 2012 Developer Edition is available at Amazon on the day of this writing for $41.24USD. That’s about the price of eight cups of fancy coffee.

SQL Server releases follow a cycle. SQL Server 2005 was a major release with big changes from SQL Server 2000. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 were not drastic departures from SQL Server 2005. Take it from me: SQL Server 2012 is a major release.

Is taking your career to the next level worth the price of eight cups of coffee?

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Participating in 3 SQL events in 8 days

AaronBertrand — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:08:00 GMT

Well, 8 days not including lead and lag travel time. A quick summary of the three events, and the flights it took to get me to each:

SQL Saturday #105 - Dublin, Ireland

Flights on March 21st:

Providence -> Philadelphia (236 miles)
Philadelphia -> Dublin (3,260 miles)

Time zone change: +4 when we got there, plus Daylight Saving Time kicked in, so +5 after the event.

I spoke at this event, and manned the SQL Sentry booth with cohort Scott Fallen. This event was a fantastic SQL Saturday - very well organized, a quite unique speaker dinner (on a boat that went up and down a canal, through several old-fashioned locks), and I had my speaker feedback before I even returned home:

We also had the Sunday free, where we rented a car, drove on the wrong side of the road (and the wrong side of the car), and visited the western coast - most importantly, the Cliffs of Moher:

I hope we get an opportunity to sponsor and attend future events in Ireland.

SQL Connections - Las Vegas, Nevada

Flights on March 26th:

Dublin -> Philadelphia (3,260 miles)
Philadelphia -> Las Vegas (2,170 miles)

Time zone change: -8

I presented two sessions in the SQL Server track: "T-SQL : Bad Habits to Kick" and "What's New in SQL Server 2012." These two sessions are getting a little old, but both seem to continue to be well-attended and appreciated. As a company we really enjoy this conference because we get a lot of different folks at the booth - developers, general admin folks, even some SharePoint people. We also really like hanging out after hours with the SQLSkills folks and other friends in the industry.

SQL Bits - London, England

Flights on March 29th:

Las Vegas -> Charlotte (1,910 miles)
Charlotte -> London Gatwick (4,000 miles)

Time zone change: +8

Bits is always fun - those guys do a bang-up job organizing this conference and we always find it very valuable as a company. I didn't speak at this event because I was a last-minute addition to the company roster - I had already committed to Connections, which overlapped with part of this conference. I did make it there for both the Friday pub event and the entire Saturday day session. This was the only leg on this entire journey where I felt any sort of jet lag whatsoever - I took a 2-hour nap on Friday afternoon. Greg (@sqlsensei) ran a half at Reading to benefit children with cancer, and set a personal record by finishing in about 1:49.

On this leg of my journey I also did the unthinkable - I forgot my iPhone in the seat back pocket when I deplaned at Gatwick. And the US Airways staff there was far less than helpful. They told me they had checked my seat multiple times (during the five hours it sat at the gate) and found no trace of my phone, however the passenger in my seat on the return flight to Charlotte later that day e-mailed me from my phone and told me he would drop it in the mail. So this in a way restored my faith in humanity, in spite of being completely frustrated with the ground crew at the airport.

And then...

...I had to get back home. Flights on April 3rd:

London Heathrow -> Philadelphia (3,530 miles)
Philadelphia -> Providence (236 miles)

Time zone change: +5

All in all it was a great trip. A little stress on Friday with my phone, but US Airways made up for it yesterday, and I hope to see the phone in my mailbox today. Total mileage (not including preferred bonuses and Nicole's miles): 18,602. Net time zone changes: 26. Value: priceless. Thanks to all the organizers of these great events.

Presenting at the NJ SQL Server User Group Tuesday 21 Feb 2012!

andyleonard — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

I am honored to present “Building Your First SSIS Package in SQL Server 2012” at the NJ SQL Server User Group Tuesday, 21 Feb 2012 starting at 6:00 PM!

If you read this blog and will be in the area, please stop by and introduce yourself! I’m the fat guy with a fu.

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