Not attending PASS Summit? Watch LIVE streaming events FOR FREE!
If you've not yet heard, the annual PASS Summit is less than 2 weeks away. This is the largest SQL Server and Business Intelligence conference _in the world_, sponsored by Microsoft and Dell. The return on investment of attending this conference is pretty huge, and I highly recommend you attend if you can swing it.
I am once more fortunate to be attending and presenting at the Summit. Here's where you can find me speaking throughout the week:
Tuesday at 3PM
Lightning Talk - Page Compression
This year, PASS has decided to try something new. A daily Lightning Talk session will be held where speakers present for 5 quick minutes on interesting SQL topics. I'll be presenting on Tuesday with 6 amazingly talented speakers. My topic is page compression -- what is it, how to do it, and (most importantly, of course) how it affects performance.
Wednesday at 11:30am in the ballroom
Women-In-Technology (WIT) Luncheon
I'll be speaking on this year's WIT luncheon panel, which is sponsored by GoDaddy.com. Contrary to common misconception, the luncheon is NOT just for women. In fact, men are encouraged to attend! If memory serves, last year's luncheon had about 300 attendees, with a good mix of both genders. This year's topic is focused on the recruitment, retention, and advancement of WIT. If you're worried that this event will end up being a feminist bitch-fest, rest assured that's most definitely not the case. I've always found the WIT events I've attended to be informative and thought-provoking. Plus, free lunch! 
Thursday at 2:30PM (room 3AB)
Heaps of Trouble, Clusters of Glory - A Look At Index Internals
You can click the link above to read my abstract, but in short, I'll be taking attendees on a journey through indexes. You'll come away with a much better understanding of the internal structures of indexes, which should help DBA's with database design and performance tuning.
If you're not able to attend in person, Summit does sell DVD's of the event afterwards, which are well worth the investment. But this year, to make the event more accessible to the community, PASS and Dell have teamed up to present live streaming of the keynotes and WIT luncheon sessions.
Here's details of the keynotes from the PASS press release:
Ted Kummert, Senior Vice President of the Business Platform Division at Microsoft Corp., will kick off PASS Summit on November 9 by highlighting the continued innovation across Microsoft’s business and information platform. Kummert will explore Microsoft’s key technical investments, as well as Mission Critical applications and the accessibility of Business Intelligence.
Quentin Clark, General Manager of Database Systems Group at Microsoft Corp., will showcase the next version of SQL Server on November 10 and will share how features in this upcoming product milestone continue to deliver on Microsoft’s Information Platform vision. Clark will also demonstrate how developers can leverage new industry-leading tools with powerful features for data developers and a unified database development experience.
David DeWitt, Technical Fellow, Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft Corp., will be discussing SQL query optimization and address why it is difficult to always execute good plans in his highly anticipated technical keynote. DeWitt will also cover new technologies that offer the promise of better plans in future releases of SQL Server.
While all of the keynotes are interesting and definitely worth watching, I cannot recommend the David DeWitt keynote more highly. His keynote last Summit was outstanding. It was technical, thought provoking, and one of the best things of last year's Summit.
You can find more information and register for the PASS Summit 2010 live streaming events at their website, www.sqlpass.org/LiveKeynotes
If you ARE attending Summit, make sure to swing by and say "hi" or message me via Twitter to see if there's a time we can meet up. Meeting people is one of my favorite things about Summit.
See you in Seattle!
My Summit abstract was accepted! I'm still a little surprised, but I'm also excited (okay, and a little nervous) to once more be presenting at the PASS Summit. If you'll be at Summit this year -- and I really hope you are, as it's well worth the time and cost -- then please make sure to say "hi" if you see me wandering around. Aside from the *excellent* content, my favorite thing about Summit is getting to meet so many great people.
In other news, I've once more switched roles within GoDaddy. For the half dozen folks who've been following my blog from the beginning, you may remember that I originally started out on the traffic team working with tuning and VLDB's, then took an opportunity to switch to the BI team to learn more about OLAP. Recently, a new team has been formed under the BI branch that's tasked with developing a massive hybrid data warehouse (by hybrid, I mean half OLTP and half OLAP). "How massive is it?" Well, it's SO massive, we're expecting to be store petabytes of data when everything is said and done. I'm happy to say I'll be on this new team. So yes, that means we have an opening for an OLAP developer. We're also hiring SQL Server DBA's. We have offices in Cedar Rapids, Denver, and the Phoenix area. Send me an e-mail at michelle at sqlfool dot com if you're interested in learning more about this great job opportunity and company.
Lastly, I want to announce that SQL Saturday 50 is now open for registration! SQL Saturday 50 will be held in Iowa City, IA on Saturday, September 18th. We're almost at 50% of our attendance capacity, so if you're interested in attending, please register soon.
That's it for now. I promise that my next blog post will be uber technical.
SQL Saturday #50 – Call for Speakers
The Call for Speakers is now open for SQL Saturday #50, the East Iowa SQL Saturday event! This is our second time hosting a SQL Saturday, and we're hoping to build upon the success of last year's event. We're looking for a wide variety of topics on SQL Server and related technologies (i.e. PowerShell, R2, LINQ, etc.). We also have had several requests for intro-level topics, such as beginning disaster recovery and basic performance tuning. If you're even remotely thinking about speaking, please submit an abstract!
Last year we had about 100 folks attend from surrounding areas. This year, we're shooting for 125 attendees, which would max out our facility's capacity. Not sure how far away Iowa City is? It may be closer than you think. Allow me to rehash my travel times from last year's plea for speakers:
- Chicago – 3.5 hours
- Omaha – 3.5 hours
- Milwaukee – 4 hours
- Kansas City – 4.5 hours
- Minneapolis – 5 hours
- St. Louis – 5 hours
- Indianapolis – 6 hours
The event will be held on September 18th at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. You can find more information, including an abstract submission form, on our event website at http://sqlsaturday.com/50/eventhome.aspx.
Oh, and if you do make it to our SQL Saturday event, please make sure to stop me and say "hi!"
Summit 2010 Abstract Submission
Jeremiah Peschka just tweeted about the looming deadline to submit an abstract for Summit 2010. I've been trying to think of a good topic to present on, and this finally got my butt in gear to submit one! For those interested, here's what I submitted:
Heaps of Trouble, Clusters of Glory - A Look At Index Internals
Indexes are a crucial component of SQL Server, especially in performance tuning, yet many DBA's don't fully understand how indexes work. In this in-depth session, Michelle will examine the anatomy of indexes, from how they're stored to how they get fragmented. And to make our inner geeks happy, she'll look at page data to show you what's happening behind the scenes. Topics covered will include index structure, fragmentation and defragmentation, index partitioning, and index filtering. If you've ever wondered just *what* goes on in an index, don't miss this session!
Special thanks to Chris for help with the session title.
#PASSAwesomeness
Allen Kinsel on Twitter (@sqlinsaneo) recently started a new Twitter tag, #PASSAwesomeness, about all of the cool things about PASS Summit. I really like the tag, so I'm going to blatantly steal borrow it for this post.
First, and long overdue, I want to give a brief recap of the East Iowa SQL Saturday. On October 17th, our local PASS chapter, 380PASS, sponsored our first ever SQL Saturday at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. By all accounts, the event was a great success! We had 90 attendees, 11 speakers, and 21 sessions. We received numerous compliments on the quality of the speakers, the niceness of the facilities, and the abundance of food. Not too shabby for our first time hosting the event, if I do say so myself.
I'd like to thank all of our wonderful speakers, especially those who traveled from out of town and out of state, for making this event such a success. I'd also like to thank our amazing volunteers for helping put this all together. Lastly, but certainly not least, I'd like to thank our generous sponsors, without whom this event would not be possible. Because this event went so smoothly and was so well received in the community, we've already started planning our next big SQL event! In the meantime, don't forget to check out our monthly 380PASS meetings to tide you over.
I'd also like to take a moment to discuss the PASS Summit. Unless you're a DBA who's been living under a rock, you've probably heard of the PASS Summit. If you *have* been living under a rock -- and hey, I'm not poking fun, I used to live under a rock, too! -- then what you need to know is that the Summit is the largest SQL Server conference in the world. It's a gathering of Microsoft developers and SQL Server gurus; the rest of us show up to try to absorb as much from them as possible. Since I've recently moved to the Business Intelligence team, I'm extremely excited to delve into the amazing amount of BI content offered.
I'm also deeply honored to be presenting at the Summit this year on some of the performance tuning techniques I've used with great success in my production environments. The session is titled, Super Bowl, Super Load - A Look At Performance Tuning for VLDB's. If you're interested in performance tuning or VLDB (very large database) topics, consider stopping by to catch my session. From what I can tell, I'll be presenting on Tuesday from 10:15am - 11:30am in room(s?) 602-604.
If you read my blog, or if we've ever interacted in any way on the internet -- Twitter, LinkedIn, e-mails, blog comments, etc. -- please stop by and say "hi"! Aside from all of the awesome SQL Server content, I'm really looking forward to meeting as many new folks as possible.
And on that note...
Getting to meet all of the amazing SQL Server professionals out there who have inspired and encouraged me in so many ways #PASSAwesomeness
Why I’m Blogging Less
I've received a few questions asking why I've been blogging less frequently, and even one inquiry after my health. Rest assured, I'm completely fine. But there are 2 perfectly good reasons why I've been blogging less these days.
East Iowa SQL Saturday:
I'm the event organizer for East Iowa SQL Saturday, which is eating up a lot of my free time. If you haven't yet heard about our SQL Saturday event, let me give you a brief overview. It's a FREE, one-day training event geared toward SQL Server professionals and anyone who wants to learn more about SQL Server. We have 22 sessions planned covering a variety of topics, from Business Intelligence to Disaster Recovery to SQL Server 2008 topics. And if you're a .NET developer, we also have some .NET-related presentations, including PowerShell and MVC.
We're very fortunate to have snagged an excellent set of speakers. Jessica Moss, Louis Davidson, Timothy Ford, Jason Strate, and Alex Kuznetsov are just a few of the great speakers we have lined up.
There's only a handful of spots left, so if you're interested in attending, you should register soon. To find out more details about the speakers and sessions, or to register, be sure to check out our website at http://sqlsaturday.380pass.org.
The Other Reason:
Yes, that's right, I'm with child. Expecting. Eating for two. Bun in the oven. In the family way. You get the idea.
So when I'm not at work, planning SQL Saturday, or playing Civilization Revolution, I'm sleeping. For those who remotely care, I'm due around Super Bowl time in February 2010.
2010: The Year I Make Contact
Rest assured, this blog isn't going away. And hopefully once I get through SQL Saturday and then PASS Summit, I'll have more free time again.
PASS Summit 2009
My abstract for PASS Summit 2009 was accepted! Woot! You may not be able to see it from where you're sitting, but I'm doing the happy dance.
In case you missed my original post on my abstract submission, here's what I'll be presenting on:
Super Bowl, Super Load - A Look at Performance Tuning for VLDB’s
Few DBA’s have the opportunity to experience a real-life load test in their production environment. Michelle Ufford works for GoDaddy.com, a company that has experienced phenomenal success with its Super Bowl ads. These ads are designed to drive traffic to the company’s websites, which puts the database servers under high load. In her presentation, Michelle will explore the performance tuning techniques that have resulted in an 80% reduction in server response times and allowed her VLDB’s to reach rates of 27k transactions per second. Topics will include vertical and horizontal partitioning, bulk operations, table design, and indexing.
Do you read my blog? Do I read yours? Do we exchange weird messages on Twitter? Do you have free cookies? If you're going to to the PASS Summit and answered "yes" to any of these questions, then I want to meet you! Make sure to say "hi" to me in Seattle.
East Iowa SQL Saturday – Call for Speakers!
The Call for Speakers is now open for the East Iowa SQL Saturday! This is our first time hosting a SQL Saturday, and there's a lot of excitement and interest from our local SQL Server folks. There's some interest from local speakers, but we'll probably also need to pull in speakers from outside of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City to support the number of tracks and attendees we plan to have.
The event will be held on October 10th, 2009 at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Special thanks to Russ Allen for his help with securing a location for us!
For those who are not in the immediate area but would be willing to travel, here's some general travel times from major cities in the area:
- Chicago - 3.5 hours
- Omaha - 3.5 hours
- Milwaukee - 4 hours
- Kansas City - 4.5 hours
- Minneapolis - 5 hours
- St. Louis - 5 hours
- Indianapolis - 6 hours
- Columbus, OH - 9 hours (hint, hint, Jeremiah!)
So if you're in the general area, please, PLEASE consider speaking at our SQL Saturday. Pretty please with sugar on top.
You can find out a little more information and submit sessions at our SQL Saturday website.
sp_WhoIsActive
For those who attended the webcast I did with Brent Ozar today, "Getting Started With SQL Server Management Studio," here's the link to Adam Machanic's excellent sp_WhoIsActive stored proc:
Thanks for attending!
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