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.
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!
Webcast Tomorrow!
I'm excited to be doing a webcast tomorrow with the infamous illustrious Brent Ozar for Quest's Pain-of-the-Week. The title is "Getting Started with SQL Server Management Studio," and as you've probably gathered, it's pretty entry-level stuff. If you read my blog, then chances are you don't need to watch this webcast. But if you know anyone who's trying to learn SQL Server or is trying to make the upgrade from 2000 to 2005/2008, this may be a good webcast for them.
I've also got a few other speaking engagements coming up:
June 2nd: Cedar Valley .NET User Group
I'll be reprising my Iowa Code Camp presentation on "SQL Server for the .NET Developer" for CVINETA. This presentation focuses on what you need to know about good table design, indexing strategies, and fragmentation... you know, what you wish every .NET developer knew about SQL Server.
June 11th: PoTW: Time-Saving SQL Server Management Studio Tips & Tricks
I'll also be doing this webcast with @BrentO as a follow-up to our webcast tomorrow. It will focus on how to save time and improve your sanity by using some neat little tricks in SSMS 2008.
Iowa Code Camp Resources
Thanks to everyone who attended my session on "SQL Server for the .NET Developer" at yesterday's Iowa Code Camp! I hope you found the session informative. Here's the materials from the presentation:
- SQL Server for the .NET Developer Slide Deck
- Index Defrag Script
- Error Handling Example
- Missing Indexes Process
Special thanks to @underwhelmed and @peschkaj for traveling to attend the Iowa Code Camp!
Open Giving
During the Iowa Code Camp, I had a chance to get involved with the Open Giving project. From the CodePlex, here's a brief overview:
An effort to create a complete registration system to create events and for volunteers to register for those events. Helps make it easier for organizations to enable people to give back to their communities.
Basically, it's an open source software project to create a *free* event management system for volunteer organizations. This is a really great cause and I'm glad I've had a chance to help. If you're interested in helping, please leave me a message and I'll put you in touch with the appropriate folks.
Iowa Code Camp – Tomorrow!
Just a reminder that the Iowa Code Camp is tomorrow! The camp is being held at Kirkwood College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and starts at 8am. There's a lot of great sessions, and attendance is free! You can find more details on their website at http://iowacodecamp.com.
I'll be presenting on "SQL Server for the .NET Developer." I'll be covering the basics of SQL Server, such as good table design, indexing strategies, and efficient queries.
The esteemed Jeremiah Peschka (@peschkaj) will be giving his presentation on "A Dynamic World Demands Dynamic SQL." If you missed his AppDev SIG presentation, here's your chance (and mine!) to see what you missed.
If you come to the Code Camp, make sure to stop by and say hi to me!
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