PASS Summit Video Recordings

PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Summit is the largest conference for data professional working with Microsoft SQL Server and Business Intelligence stack. Typically, PASS would have the Summit once a year (in the fall) in Seattle, Washington. PASS Summit offers a wealth of knowledge. Each year, there are hundreds of sessions on various SQL Server and Business Intelligence topics presented by industry experts and also Microsoft employees. If you are a data professional, who are working with Microsoft SQL Server and Business Intelligence, PASS Summit is a great event to learn and network with fellow data professionals. If you were unable to attend the past PASS Summits (or if you attended the past PASS Summits and want to relive and review those sessions), you can go to SQL PASS site and watch the past PASS Summit Session Recordings for free. As of the writing of this blog post, you can view recordings for PASS Summit 2015 and older for free (you need to be a member of SQL PASS but the registration is free). Even though they might be a few years old, they are excellent learning resources.

By the way, if you can attend PASS Summit in person, I would recommend it. PASS Summit 2018 is going to be in Seattle, Washington, in November 2018. You can get more information from PASS Summit 2018 site.

Reflection on Steve Stedman's Database Corruption Challenge

Over the past few months, Steve Stedman (blog | twitter) has been conducting database corruption challenge. It is a challenge where Steve would post corrupt SQL Server databases and the participants would try to fix the corruption to the best of their ability. The participants would need to avoid any data loss when trying to fix the database corruption.

SQL in the City: Boston

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to go to a day of free SQL training event that was organized by Red Gate Software. The event was called SQL in the City. It was conducted on October 8th, 2012 at Harvard University's The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center. It had a pretty good turnout, considering that it was a Columbus day holiday (for some people).

The training covered various topics, from SQL Server maintenance, monitoring, development, and others. The training sessions were being presented by SQL Server MVPs, such as Steve Jones (blog | twitter), Grant Fritchey (blog | twitter) and Adam Machanic (blog | twitter). They really passionate and more importantly knowledgeable about SQL Server. They also were very approachable. They made themselves available for questions even after their sessions, so we can interact with them, which was awesome.

One of the sessions that I found interesting was "Architecting Hybrid Data Systems with SQL Server and Windows Azure". It was presented by Buck Woody (blog | twitter). Obviously, "Cloud" is now the buzz word in IT. Buck pointed out, which I agree totally, that before moving to the "Cloud" we should think about the current problems that we have, and if by moving to the "Cloud", it would help to resolve those problems.

There were also a lot of Red Gate people in the events. I was able to interact with some of them and learned more about their tools/ software, some of which that I did not know about. Tools such as SQL Storage Compress, which I am looking forward to test and might be useful to save some (… well hopefully large amount of) disk space in our testing environment.

Overall, it was well organized event. It was a good day for me to network and also to learn more about SQL Server and Red Gate products. Thank you Red Gate. Hopefully, this can be an annual event in Boston.

SQL Saturday #142–Waltham, MA

SQL Saturday is a one-day, jam-packed, educational event organized by and for local SQL Server Professionals, with the help of corporate and personal sponsors. It is free of charge, although you will need to register to reserve your spot. SQL Saturday #142 is going to be held in Waltham, Massachusetts. Here’s the detail:

What: SQL Saturday #142
When: Saturday 19th May 2012 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM (Eastern Time)
Where: Microsoft Office, 201 Jones Rd., Waltham, MA 02451 (Map)

To register, please go to http://www.sqlsaturday.com/142/eventhome.aspx. Currently, there are about 30 sessions scheduled for SQL Saturday #142. For a complete schedule and description of the sessions, you can check it out at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/142/schedule.aspx.

Why You Should Attend?

If you are in the area, I would recommend you to attend this event. There are 3 main reasons on why you should attend this event:

1. Educational – SQL Saturday is a great place to learn different aspects of SQL Servers. If you look at the list of sessions for this SQL Saturday, you will see a wide variety of topics related to SQL Server. You can learn anything from SQL in the cloud (SQL Azure) to the newly released SQL Server 2012. There are also sessions on SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services. Each session is scheduled to run for about 1 – 1.5 hours. Obviously, you will most likely not be able to master the session topic within that short time period. However, it can help to get your feet wet on the subject.
2. Networking – This event is a great way to meet fellow local SQL Server Professionals. We can always learn from each other experiences.
3. Meet with Vendor(s) – There are going to be a few vendors that are coming to this SQL Saturday. This is a chance to see some of their product demo, ask questions about their product(s) and possibly see if any of their product(s) can help your organization.

Not in the Area?

SQL Saturday might be coming to a city near you. You should check SQL Saturday site for a list of upcoming SQL Saturday events in various location.

24 Hours of PASS: Fall 2011

Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) is going to have two days of SQL Server online training on September 7 – 8, 2011. The training event is called 24 Hours of PASS. Just as its name indicates, there are going to be 24 training sessions, with each running for about an hour long. The sessions will be conducted by SQL experts, such as Brent Ozar, Gail Shaw, Denny Cherry, and many others. The event is going to covers many aspects of SQL Server, such as SQL Server Business Intelligence, PowerShell for SQL Server Administration, SQL Server Integration Services, and many more. You can see the list of sessions that they are going to have here.

While the training will not make you an expert in the subject, but it is a great way to quickly expose yourself to the subject. The thing about this event is that it is free. You can sign up for as many sessions as you like. To register for the sessions, you can go here.

So, to quickly recap:

What: 24 Hours of PASS (24HOP)
Where: Virtual
When: September 7 – 8, 2011

For more information, you can click here. To register you can click here.