I debated about whether or not to write my own post, until I remembered that this blog serves as a mini-journal for me too. I have a notoriously poor memory–my husband likes to say that my CPU and memory are good, but I must have an unusual clustering strategy–so maybe this blog post will be a good pointer for me when I start prepping for next year’s Summit.

This was definitely the best PASS Summit conference ever. While there will always be opportunities to do things better–improvement is a never-ending process–it was clear that the organizers of this event listened to the feedback they had received the previous year. One of the best changes? Backpacks. These were very useful, as evidenced by their presence everywhere. Nice job, organizers!

My absolute favorite thing about Summit is the chance to meet and reconnect with so many amazing SQL folks. There were entirely too many people to list out, but some highlights include meeting Crys Manson, Jorge Segarra, and Karen Lopez for the first time. I also had a chance encounter with Ola Hallengren in the Sheraton elevator. Apparently we were only staying a few rooms apart this year. We ended up having a couple of really great discussions about index fragmentation, the differences between our scripts, and things we’d like to see changed in future releases of SQL Server.

I had the opportunity to sit on the panel at the WIT luncheon. All of the women on the panel were amazing, and I was honored just to be sitting at the same table as them. I was especially pleased to meet Nora Denzel, a Senior Vice President at Intuit. Intelligent, confident, and witty, she is a great role model for young technical women, myself included. I can only hope that some of her gumption rubbed off on me due to our close proximity. After the event, I was pleasantly surprised by how many folks–men and women both–came up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed it. Thanks to the WIT VC for organizing another great event!

The lightning talk sessions were a new feature this year, and I think I like it. The format of the lightning session is 7 speakers presenting on a topic for 5 quick minutes. Watching these sessions is kind of like skipping right to the center of a tootsie pop: all content and no fluff. The standout lightning talk presentation for me was Adam Machanic’s. It was beautifully rehearsed and choreographed. Nice job, Adam!

Another of the many highlights of the week was meeting the Microsoft execs. In addition to meeting Ted Kummert, Mark Souza, and Donald Farmer–all very nice gentlemen–I had the opportunity to speak at length with Jose Blakely about Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW). PDW, formerly codenamed Madison, was officially launched at Summit. Jose was kind enough to explain the PDW architecture, both where it came from and the vision for where it’s going. I’d attempt to regurgitate it here, but I think the probability of me misquoting would be high.

Suffice it to say, this technology has me excited. Why? Quite frankly, I think PDW will do for data warehousing what SQL Server did for databases, and what Analysis Services did for BI: make it affordable. With a compelling cost-per-terabyte, an attractive scale-out approach, and an entry point at under $1 million, we’ll see more small-to-midsized companies implementing data warehousing and business intelligence. This is good news for those of us looking for an affordable data warehouse solution and for those of us who make our living with SQL Server. And for those of you who might suggest that few companies need a datawarehouse that can support multi-terabyte data, I’d like to point out that just 3 or 4 years ago, 100 GB was considered a lot of data.

I spent most of my week digging into the PDW architecture. It’s not all roses–it’s a first release and, as such, is immature compared to the much older and more established data warehouse systems–but again, it has a lot going for it, not least of all it’s easy integration within a SQL Server environment and the relatively low cost. We’re currently investigating this as a possible data warehouse solution for our business intelligence environment, so expect to see more from me about PDW as I learn more about it.

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.

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.

11:49 AM PST
The room is filling up nicely! There’s a nice distribution of men and women in the room. This is great! I’m actually pleasantly surprised at the number of women at the Summit.  If it weren’t for this luncheon, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed just how many SQL ladies there actually are.

12:00 PM PST
The WIT luncheon is underway! We start off with watching an energetic video displaying various types of women and men who each state “I am a technical woman” or “I support technical women.”

Rushabh Mehta, Executive VP of Finance for PASS, opens the WIT luncheon with the statement “PASS Supports Technical Women.” He then hands the floor over to Wendy Pastrick (@wendy_dance) for moderation of today’s panel.

Today’s panel is:

• Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi)
• Jessica Moss (@jessicammoss)
• Cathi Rodgveller (@IgniteGirls)
• Lynn Langit (@llangit)

12:10 PM PST
Kathi starts off with a great message: “I want to encourage women to enter technology, but I want to encourage boys too.” She started off as a pharmacist because “I was probably born 5 years too early” but later switched to technology. She makes less money but enjoys it more. Her daughter had to learn HTML for school and actually helped her get her first work in IT by showing her how to program. “I want both boys and girls to have the opportunity to discover lots of different things and to find what they love. And hopefully that’ll be technology.”

12:17 PM PST
The floor is then handed over to Jessica Moss, BI guru extraordinaire. She gives a great example of how influential a father can be in a young girl’s life: her father was the one who got her interested in technology and who encouraged her career. She says she never felt like she could *not* be technical because she was raised to believe she could do anything. She ends with a challenge for everyone at the Summit: talk to just one young woman and encourage her interest in technology.

12:23 PM PST
Cathi Rodgveller shares her background in education and how she started IGNITE (Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution). The goal of IGNITE is to excite young women, minority races, and low-income youth, about technology and about technical careers. Rodgveller gives us a powerful message: “You can have an impact in your community. One [positive technology] event can change a young girl’s life.”

12:28 PM PST
Last, but certainly not least, Lynn Langit takes the floor. She starts off with a challenge to all audience members: tweet or text one person to say “I’m a technical women” or “I support technical women.” The room gets active while people are busy typing or texting, and Twitter is abuzz with various tweets and retweets. Lynn then takes the floor back and talks about her background and about her charity work. She mentions that every time someone buys one of her books, a donation is made to the MONA foundation. Langit also shares some of her experiences as a technical women: “I’m a developer evangelist. I’m often the only woman in the room, and I’M the one giving the presentation.”

12:35 PM PST
It’s now time for Q&A with the audience. I’ve also invited members of the Twitter community to send in their questions or comments, and we’ll do our best to get them answered. Following is a brief summary of the questions and answers provided:

Q: First up is a father of 2 teenage girls. He wants to know why WIT programs have continued to fall since 1985.
A: WIT is a low priority for schools. Schools have so many other priorities, and not enough time or funding, to address everything they need to. We need intervention from outside sources to stimulate change and ensure it’s being addressed. Rodgveller is working with her state Senator to try to enact change on the national level.

Moss mentions that studies show the top 2 issues for WIT are recruitment and retention. She also points out that middle school years are very formative and important for young women to foster their interest in technology. Rodgveller interjects that even high school is not “too late” to inspire young women.

Q: Another father asks, how can he remove stereotypes for children?
A: Parents are the best resources, period. Parents need to support their children at home and to let them know that stereotypes are negative and not okay. This includes not just gender issues, but also issues of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

Q: Today’s youth are concerned about the technical job market in US because of the prevalence of off-shores outsourcing. Is it still a good idea for young people to join today’s technical workforce, and how can we encourage them?
A: There are still plenty of opportunities in IT. In fact, one of the hottest trends today in technology is BI. The best way to ensure that your job is not outsourced is to stay relevant and keep up with the newest technology; those are not the jobs that are outsourced overseas.

Q: In the South, there are still lots of stereotypes. For instance, women frequently are not hired by companies for technical positions. Comments like “We can’t hire a woman for that job because it’s too valuable; what if she gets pregnant?” are still made. What can be done about this?
A: One of the executives from CA, the sponsor of the WIT luncheon, takes the stage to answer. He says in no uncertain terms that, at his company, those individuals making the disparaging remarks would be terminated. He says that the type of attitude described has to come from the top down, and the company is limiting itself by not hiring women. He ends with a message for employees to not tolerate discrimination and to go to HR whenever they see it happening.

Q: What can parents do to help WIT?
A: Parents are the greatest resource kids have. Parents set the attitude for their kids; if your attitude is positive, it will encourage your daughter to try new things and will open her up to opportunity whenever it presents itself. Also, parents need to raise the issue with schools, i.e. through PTA meetings, to make them realize that it’s important to you and it’s important for your children.

Moss: “But at the end of the day, it is the parent’s responsibility to expose your children to as much technology and as many experiences as possible.”

Kellenberger: “It is up to the parents to break stereotypes, for jobs, gender, race, etc. It’s the parent’s attitude that makes the difference.”

So that’s all I have for the Women In Technology luncheon. There was a lot of great content and some very positive messages from our panel. For more information on this topic, please check out the following resources:

• Steve Jone’s musings on the WIT luncheon
• What can men do? (to help WIT)
• IGNITE

8:36 AM PST
Keynote kicks off with Don’t Stop Believing by Journey. Awesome.

8:38 AM PST
PASS VP of Marketing Bill Graziano just takes the stage. He promises the shortest keynote of the conference, and appears to deliver on it. First up are Board announcements.

Outgoing Board Members are:

• Greg Low
• Pat Wright (@sqlAsylum)
• Kevin Kline (@kekline)

If you these folks at Summit, make sure to thank them for their hard work!

PASS President Wayne Snyder comes out to honor and thank Kevin Kline for his 10 YEARS of service.  Yes, that’s right, 10 YEARS. Wayne doesn’t get far into his speech before he gets choked up.  Great quote from Wayne:  “Kevin (@kekline) is a man of honor and integrity. He’s… well, he’s full of it.”  Kevin then gets a well-deserved standing ovation from the entire audience.

New Directors-at-Large are also announced:

• Brian Moran
• Jeremiah Peschka (@peschkaj)
• Tom LaRock (@SQLRockstar)

Next year’s PASS Summit is also announced.  It will be in Seattle from November 8th – 11th, 2010. The decision was made to have the conference in Seattle because it’s a launch year, so access to Microsoft employees will be invaluable.  The registration rate is $995 if you register soon. Details and registration can be found on the PASS site at www.sqlpass.org/summit/na2010.

8:52 AM PST
Dell keynote just started with Patrick Ortiz, Solution Architect with Dell’s Infrastructure Consulting Services for SQL Server & BI.  The keynote is pretty uneventful.

9:17 AM PST
Woot! Dr. David DeWitt, Technical Fellow, Data & Storage Platform Division at Microsoft, takes the stage. His presentation is entitled, “From 1 to 1000 MIPS.” He promises a very technical talk, against Microsoft Marketing’s wishes. He’s not going to be announcing any products, but instead plans to discuss the changes in database technology and what’s in store for us in the next 10 years.

Highlights (or at least, the ones that my simple mind was able to grasp):

• Basic RDMS design is essentially unchanged, but the hardware has changed dramatically.
• Interesting statistics in disk trends last 30 years: 10,000x capacity, 65x transfer rate, 10x avg seek time… not balanced at all
• “CPU’s and disks are totally out-of-whack in terms of performance.”
• The benefits of 1,000x improvement in CPU is almost negated by lack of improvement in disk
• Transfer bandwidth/byte trends: 1980 = 0.015, in 2009 = 0.0001… 150x slower today! “It’s like trying to provide drinking water for the town through a garden hose.”
• “Can incur up to one L2 data cache miss per row processed if row size is greater than size of cache line.”
• DBMS transfers the ENTIRE ROW from disk to memory even though the query required just 3 attributes.
• “Takeaway: DBMS must avoid doing random disk I/O as much as possible.”

In short, DeWitt shows us the power of indexing and vertical partitioning in very technical terms. He also gives us a taste for column-oriented design, which we’ll catch a glimpse of in SQL Server 2008 R2.  Awesomeness.

The keynote wraps up with a promise to include DeWitt’s presentation on the Summit DVD.  If you missed the conference, then trust me, DeWitt’s presentation is worth the cost alone; all of the sessions are just a nice bonus on top of that. 

8:00 AM PST
Michelle shows up extra early today, having learned her lesson from yesterday. Coffee in hand. Ah, much better than yesterday.

8:41 AM PST
Rushabh Mehta just took the stage to the tune of All Star.

8:46 AM PST
Interesting statistics:

• 15% reduction in revenue
• 40% growth in the SQL PASS community
• 67% reduction in IT expenses

Rushabh encourages support in the PASS community. He challenges everyone to volunteer at least an hour a month with your local user group. If you would like to become more involved in the local East Iowa SQL Server user group, please let me know!

8:51 AM PST
Wayne Snyder just took the stage to present the PASSion Awards. Folks recognized include:

• Tim Ford (@sqlagentman) – for his work on the Program Committee and Quiz Bowl. Tim was no where to be seen!  Probably eating left-over bagels.
• Grant Fritchey (@GFritchey) – for his contributions to getting SQL Server Standard relaunched. Grant also had the opportunity to show off his fabulous kilt!
• Jacob Sebastian (@jacobsebastian) – for his contributions to the Asia community. He has started 6 chapters in India. Wow!
• Amy Lewis – for her contributions to the BI Virtual Chapters and growing the sub-chapters.

9:00 AM PST
2009 International PASSion Award recipient is Charlie Hanania. Accomplishments include Swiss Chapter Leader and managing the entire 2009 PASS European Conference.

2009 North American PASSion Award recipient is Allen Kinsel (@sqlinsaneo)! Allen’s accomplishments include 5 years with PASS, and Program Manager for the 2009 Program Committee. He helped tremendously with Summit 2009, so if you see him around Summit, be sure to thank him!

Read more about the PASSion Award winners here.

9:07 AM PST
Tom Casey just took the stage. His first challenge is for all Summit attendees to act as agents of change in their respective organizations. Interesting statistic: only 20% of business users have the data they need to do their job effectively. Tom’s call to arms is to improve that statistic.

9:13 AM PST
Tom Casey: “PASS Summit is the place to be for B-I.” Statistics from Summit 2009: 2 dedicated BI tracks with 50+ BI-related sessions. Last year, 20% of attendees expressed interest in BI; this year, that number is 31%.

9:16 AM PST
Ron VanZanten, Directing Officer of Business Intelligence for Premier Bank Card, just joined Tom on stage. He works with over 25 TB of data and has used BI to leverage the data that they collect. His 3,200 employees use this information to perform their job. VanZanten wanted a flexible BI stack that would grow with the company. He’s successfully tested Madison to improve performance & scale out his environment. This is very encouraging news for any large data warehouse environment.

9:23 AM PST
Tom recognizes that data is available in a wide variety of mediums and that the numbers of sources will only continue to increase. He also introduces a new term: “spreadmart” – spreadsheets that are used as data marts.

9:30 AM PST
Amir Netz just takes the stage to give everyone a demo of the self-service BI offerings in SQL Server 2008 R2. Features include PowerPivot and SharePoint services. Amir shows us an Excel spreadsheet PowerPivot table with 100m rows. It’s amazingly fast. While I shudder to think of end users actually asking for 100m rows in Excel (and trust me, I’m sure it’ll happen), this is going to be a great breakthrough for our BI admins and our power IW users. It’s a time saver and gives greater visibility into data. While I realize the self-service BI offerings are still young, I’m excited for the future of BI. I can’t wait to implement what I’ve seen in our reporting environments.

11:55 AM PST
Tom Casey returns to center stage. Tom announces a contest to win an X-Box 360. To enter, follow @powerpivot & retweet: “Want to learn more, go to http://bit.ly/4n5vpd & sign up for the November CTP #powerpivot.” Tom concludes the keynote with his call to arms to increase the number of business users who have access to the BI data that they need to do their job effectively (currently 20%).

So there you have it, today’s keynote. Check back tomorrow for details on Thursday’s keynote; it looks to be the best yet.

8:00 AM PST
Michelle gets situated at the blog table, running late and doesn’t even have time for coffee. Ack!

8:05 AM PST
Computer finishes booting up, Twitter loaded. Interesting statistics: 31% of folks expressed interest in Business Intelligence, up significantly from previous years. More than 400 Microsoft product developers and managers, and 98 SQL Server MVP’s, are in attendance.

8:06 AM PST
Wayne Snyder talks about Virtual Chapters. Did you know there are 5 sub-chapters in the Business Intelligence virtual chapter?

8:07 AM PST
Wayne reviews 24HoursOfPASS. Interesting statistics: 50,123 registrations, and 3,524 folks in 70+ countries.

8:09 AM PST
Wayne announces the return of SQL Server Standard. The first article was posted this past week. Content is free but only available online. Seasoned SQL Server authors can earn $500 per article. Interested parties should contact Grant Fritchey (@GFritchey).

8:18 AM PST
Closing words by Wayne: “Remember, no one should be a stranger at Summit.” Make sure to say “hi” to at least one person you have never met before. The more people feel welcome, the more successful the event!

8:24 AM PST
I receive my first-ever press announcement and immediately start leaking sharing the news. First up: SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP scheduled for November release! Also, looks like Madison is being rebranded as “SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse.” I think I prefer the simplicity of “Madison.

8:26 AM PST
Microsoft announces a new TPC-E record of 2,012 tpsE. This is a platform-independent world record for *any* OLTP system. Oracle, eat your heart out.

8:30 AM PST
More details on the TPC-E benchmark world record: Unisys ES7000 model 7600R Enterprise Server on 96-core Xeon platform (first server with >64 cores). The same Unisys server also reached 102,778 QphH (queries per hour), a data warehousing performance improvement of 70%.

8:39 AM PST
Bob tells us that the IO strain on virtualized machines is there but negated by Hyper-V. We’re given a demo of live migration: it appears that migration is seamless and that transactions are unaffected by the process. Very cool.

8:42 AM PST
Bob talks about the future of SQL Server as more companies move toward the cloud.

8:50 AM PST
Bob concludes his speech by discussing the future of the data professional, and how the DBA role will not become obsolete but merely transformed.

8:52 AM PST
Ted Kummert, Senior VP of SQL Server, takes the stage.

8:56 AM PST
Ted’s Top 5 Reasons to be at PASS Summit:

#1 You are part of the world’s largest gathering of SQL Server professionals
#2 You can take your questions directly to the “source”
#3 We’ve got Wayne and Rushabh
#4 You can work hard and PLAY hard
#5 You will build skills & knowledge on the #1 database in the world

9:16 AM PST
Dan Jones, Principle Group Program Manager for SQL Server Manageability, takes the stage.

9:20 AM PST
Dan gives us a demo of SQL Server 2008 R2, including Utility Control Points.

9:30 AM PST
I need to leave to check in for my 10:30 am presentation. Bummed I’m going to miss the last of the keynote.

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

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.

In related news, yesterday I received the green light from GD legal to submit my abstract. This is my first-ever abstract for PASS, and I’m pretty excited about the topic. After some technical difficulties that resulted in SQL statements being displayed in the error message on-screen (tsk tsk), I finally submitted and received my confirmation number. Here’s an overview, just in case you plan to speak on the same topic…

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.

Source: http://sqlfool.com/2009/04/pass-summit-my-abstract-deadline-extended