Search results matching tags 'community', 'sql', and 'sqlbits'

New PASS Summit speakers that deserve votes

rob_farley — Thu, 19 May 2011 03:35:25 GMT

I’m not going to ask you to vote for the abstracts that I submitted for the PASS Summit. I’m not even going to mention the abstracts that Roger and Ashley submitted. I figure if you’re reading this, you may have already read the post I wrote about them, back before SQLPASS had said that there’d be voting.

Instead, I’m going to pick a few people that I recommend you vote for.

The people I’m going to pick are Paul White, Chris Testa-O’Neill and Erin Stellato. Three very different people, even from different countries. But I don’t think any of them have spoken at the PASS Summit before, and it would be good if they got accepted.

Paul White (NZ) is a fellow blogger at sqlblog.com. If you haven’t read his stuff, you’re seriously missing out. He spends an inordinate amount of time researching the behaviour of SQL Server, and has discovered all kinds of amazing things. He recently gave a presentation at the Boston SQL Saturday, and there was a lot of good feedback about it.

Chris Testa-O’Neill (UK) is one of the organisers of the SQLBits conferences in the UK, and has also appeared on many of the eLearning training for Microsoft. He hails from Manchester but has family living in Adelaide. He visited over Christmas and did an excellent job of speaking at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group.

Erin Stellato (US) blogs at erinstellato.com (I guess that makes sense). I met her briefly at the last PASS Summit, but over recent months have had a few conversations with her about some of the things she writes about on her blog. She submitted an abstract for 24 Hours of PASS event, but didn’t manage to get enough votes to speak. Despite this, I know she knows her stuff, and would do an excellent job presenting.

So there’s three people that I recommend you vote for. You can easily see the abstracts they’ve submitted on the site, to help in your decision. There are plenty of other people you should vote for too, such as the Scottish Jen Stirrup, the Aussie Darren Gosbell, or Seattle’s own Kendra Little (I think they haven’t spoken at the PASS Summit before either) – but please have a look through the names and pick some that are not the usual suspects.

@rob_farley

Something for everyone at the SQLBits Training Day

rob_farley — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:03:30 GMT

Of course, the one not to miss is the one I’m doing, on Fixing Queries with Advanced T-SQL Techniques, but actually, they’re all excellent.

For example, Simon’s just blogged that Buck Woody’s seminar topic has changed. Instead of being on career development, it’s now on DBA skills for the non-DBA. This is a seminar that every .Net developer and Windows admin should be on. I can think of many sysadmins and helpdesk operators who should be sitting in the room listening to Buck explain this material. It’s the type of event that whole teams should attend, and I hope that dev shops from all around the UK (and beyond) will take advantage of this.

The Virtualisation day from Brent Ozar is amazingly relevant for just about everyone as well, considering that everyone wants to know about whether virtualisation is worth embracing or not. I’ve had plenty of clients ask me just that in the past year or two, and I would happily send people to Brent’s day to learn from one of the best.

Another topic of massive interest has to be Chris Webb’s day on tuning SSAS. I taught Chris’ MDX course in Adelaide recently (and will do so again in the not-too-distant future), and I can happily attest to Chris’ expertise in this area. With an increasing number of people venturing into the BI space, this will be a popular talk – as will Chris Testa-O’Neill’s seminar on Reporting Services. Chris is the owner of the Manchester accent heard on the Microsoft eLearning courses about SSRS, and at least if you’re in the room and don’t understand what he’s saying you can put your hand up and ask! (Only joking – Chris’ accent is perfectly understandable. He’s also going to be in Adelaide speaking to my user group in December, which will be a great time!)

Continuing the fantastic quality, the top-ranked precon from TechEd North America this year is being repeated. Maciej Pilecki’s seminar about SQLOS goes into SQL internals to a depth that few in the world can match. If you’re a DBA wanting to get deeper, then this is for you.

For database developers, Klaus Aschenbrenner is delving into SQLCLR and Service Broker – areas which I find are still very underappreciated.

And of course, my seminar, looking at the way that various query constructs translate into plans, and how to improve the way they’re handled. We’ll be looking at all kinds of things, leaving you wishing that you weren’t registered for the rest of SQLBits (because you’ll be wanting to connect back to work to fix up some of your queries). In fact, if you’re coming along to my stuff, feel free to bring some queries, and I’ll see if I can use them in some of my examples. That’ll get you some consulting time thrown into the price of the event.

So I really think there’s something for everyone. If you’re a database developer and not interested in my one, then do Klaus’, or one of the Chrisses’. If you’re a DBA, then get yourself onto Maciej’s or Brent’s, and get your non-DB colleagues onto Buck’s (and as many of them as you can). Just make sure you’re hanging around for the Friday and Saturday as well for one of the best SQL events in the world.

I’ll see you there!

PS: Did I mention that you can get a discount if you register today?

SQLBits pre-con – Fixing Queries with Advanced T-SQL

rob_farley — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:50:00 GMT

I’m giving a pre-con seminar at SQLBits 7 on September 30 this year in York (the Old one, in Yorkshire – similar to the New one, but with different songs). Let me quickly explain a few things about it – to help you persuade your boss to let you attend (and when you’ve done the persuading, go here and pick the “Full Conference” option).

It’s on the topic of Advanced T-SQL, but from a very practical perspective. I’m not going to be going into the uses of ranking functions or recursive CTEs as I have done with courses I’ve written in the past. Instead, I’ll be spending time looking at a bunch of things that I find most people don’t know about their queries, and show how various things can impact those queries’ execution plans. So it’s not so much Advanced features, but deeper aspects of the T-SQL you already know.

For example, I’ll look at a query that Denny Cherry and I discussed a while back, and consider how various things could be addressed using aspects of T-SQL such as sorting by aggregated fields with GROUP BY. By considering the impact of something like this, seeing where it can be used safely and where it can’t be used safely, hopefully you will be able to make better decisions about your T-SQL code and the methods you choose to solve problems.

Why do I want to speak on this topic? After all, it can be a lot of fun to talk about ranking functions or recursive CTEs – that’s functionality that a lot of people don’t really leverage, and it can help solve a lot of problems. But the things that I’m going to cover will help your overall understanding of T-SQL, and give you practical ways to improve a lot of the queries that you’ve written in the past. I will show you how to make your queries simpler, but better.

I remember one of the first times I explained some of these things to someone. They said “Wow, you’re making me want to go back and reconsider every query I’ve ever written.” That’s the kind of feedback that I’m hoping to get from the attendees.

Some of the points I’ll make will overlap will things that I covered in my SQLBits talk from last November (as reviewed by Phil Nolan – it was also Ian Russell’s favourite talk), and things that I covered in the 24 Hours of PASS in May (as reviewed by HanSQL). They were both popular talks, and hopefully people who attend the whole day of material will also get a lot out of it.

Being a pre-con, it does have a cost associated with it (the free event is on the Saturday). But I guess it comes down to the value. If you have a budget for training this year and want to find something to spend it on, then the paid portions of SQLBits (including my seminar of course!) are definitely worthwhile. If you don’t write T-SQL, then maybe one of the Chris’ (Webb or Testa) talks on SSRS or SSAS, or Brent Ozar’s session on Virtualisation could be for you (but be careful – he spells Virtualisation with a Z), or Buck Woody’s session maybe. There are seven to choose from (the others are Klaus and Maciej), and I’m sure they’ll all be excellent.

So get yourself to sqlbits.com and start planning a trip to Yorkshire.

I’ve also submitted some sessions for the main conference, so if you’re keen to see more, get up to York for the whole three days of Sep 30 to Oct 2 and be prepared to learn something. Having been a part of SQLBits V in South Wales (also the Old one), I can assure you this is one of the world’s top SQL events and shouldn’t be missed. It’ll also be a highlight for me as my latest year of being an MVP ends on September 30. Hopefully October 1 will bring a renewed award, but if it doesn’t, then this pre-con will be the last thing I do as an MVP.