PASS

You are currently browsing articles tagged PASS.

12 + 12 = 24

August 31, 2010 in Events | No comments

For the second time this year, the SQL PASS folks are organizing another 24 Hours of PASS, a 24-hour free virtual training event. Each session takes one hour, so there are 24 presentations in total. Instead of putting them right after each other, this time they’ve decided to split the event in half: 12 hours on the first day and another 12 hours on the second.

When?

Wednesday, September 15th and Thursday, September 16th. Each day the sessions start at 1200 GMT, so for us Belgians we need to add two hours for our local time.

Is it an interesting idea to split the event in two? During the day I have to work, so I usually enroll for some sessions during the evening, starting earliest at 1800 and ending around midnight. Looking at the schedule for the Fall event, it means that I’ll be able to attend sessions during two evenings instead of one. Except, Wednesday evening I go swimming with our oldest daughter. Ah well, better luck next time.

So, what are you waiting for? Register here, it’s free and it’s interesting! (Well, it’s probably not interesting for everyone on this planet, but it should be interesting to you – otherwise you wouldn’t be reading my blog either )

If you require more info: check out the agenda!

Have fun!

Valentino.

Tags: Community Event, data, PASS

Another 24 Hours Of PASS

April 28, 2010 in Events | 1 comment

Just like last year, PASS will organize another 24 hours of PASS virtual conference. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s 24 hours of free SQL Server-related training. Each session takes one hour, making 24 sessions in total.

I think the most difficult part of attending this event is combining it with your job/family. Last year I was lucky: I happened to have a day off and at home we didn’t have anything big planned, so I was able to pick up a few sessions. This year I’m not having any holidays in that period so I’ll need to filter quite well. Or be lucky with the timing. Which doesn’t seem to be the case: it’s a Wednesday and Wednesday means I go swimming with our oldest daughter in the evening.

So, hopefully the videos are available for download afterwards, then I’ll have something to watch on the train commuting to work.

The event will take place on May 19th, 2010, starting at 12:00 GMT (UTC).

Obviously, the focus will be on the newly released R2. So what are you waiting for? Go register before it’s sold out, it’s free!

What sessions am I interested in?

Session 05 (BI) – Start time 16:00 GMT
Implementing MDM Using SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services
Presenter: Rushabh Mehta

Session 06 (DBA) – Start time 17:00 GMT
What’s Really Happening on Your Server? 15 Powerful SQL Server Dynamic Management Objects
Presenter: Adam Machanic

Session 10 (DBA) – Start time 21:00 GMT
Using Data Compression with SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2
Presenter: Maciej Pilecki

Session 11 (BI) – Start time 22:00 GMT
Easier than Ever Report Authoring in SSRS 2008 R2
Presenter: Jessica M. Moss

Session 12 (Dev) – Start time 23:00 GMT
High Performance Functions
Presenter: Simon Sabin

Session 15 (BI) – Start time 02:00 GMT
Producing Dashboards with PerformancePoint Services
Presenter: Peter Myers

Session 16 (BI) – Start time 03:00 GMT
Reporting Services Enhancements in SQL Server 2008
Presenter: Greg Low

Session 24 (DBA) – Start time: 11:00 GMT
BLITZ! 60 Minute Server Takeovers
Presenter: Brent Ozar

72 Hours Of PASS

Or better, that’s what the European PASS Conference stands for. I went there last week and had a great time! I met some friends over there, was able to put a face to some names which I already knew through the almighty internet, and had a chat with people I never met before. Really good experience.

And that’s not all of course, I saw some really interesting sessions as well! Let’s see, what sessions made me take out my notebook? (No, not to surf, the old paper version!)

There was of course the pre-conference by Donald Farmer. He’s worth seeing just for his Scottish accent alone. And on top of that, he’s one of the better speakers that I’ve ever seen. And he’s “the BI guy from Microsoft” Initially I was planning to see the sessions by Adam Saxton but after seeing some memory dump analysis I decided that I would probably never do that myself anyway… I think once you’re on that level, it’s time that you apply for a job at Microsoft.

So, what other sessions did I take notes at? Chris Webb and his session about DAX. Until now I haven’t had the time to play with PowerPivot, but I think time has come to get it installed. He gave some quite interesting tips, such as the one on the Time table that shouldn’t end in the middle of the year.

Later on I saw Markus Raatz about the hidden BI treasures on CodePlex. Yes Markus, if it were up to me you’ll be doing the sequel next year!

I also made some notes during another Chris Webb session, about warming SSAS cache. A tip that I noted down: do not use subqueries in your MDX (such as the ones generated by the query designer in Reporting Services) because the global cache will not be used.

I saw several more speakers but won’t go into detail on those sessions. Except for this last one: the session on PowerPivot (and everything that’s related to it) by Kasper de Jonge. It was one of the last sessions on Friday, and we finally saw some interesting (read: not repeated for the n-th time) demos using PowerPivot. Well done Kasper! You were one of the lesser-experienced speakers (mind: I’m referring to speaking experience here, not technical!) and you were far better than some other speaker with years of experience (I won’t mention his name here but those who saw the presentation must know who I’m talking about).

That’s it for now people, have fun!

Valentino.

Tags: Community Event, PASS

PASS European Conference 2010

February 11, 2010 in SQL Server | 2 comments

With great pleasure I’d like to share with you that my employer has approved my request to attend the SQL PASS European Conference! (Thank you Ordina )

This event will take place at 21-23 April 2010 in Neuss, Germany.

I’m really looking forward to this, I’m sure it will be three days with a lot of learning, a lot of networking and a lot of fun!

If you’re going too and you’re from Belgium: have a look at the Belgian SQL Server User Group site for a discount code!

Ow, and post a comment here so that we can have a chat over there!

Sessions I’m Planning To See

(list updated on April 14)

Day One (April 21)

The event hasn’t started yet and I’m already having difficulty in choosing my sessions. This day is the official start of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Tour and there’s a full day of sessions on R2 planned. But they are level 200, while Adam Saxton is talking about SSRS in a level 500 full-day session (I always thought that the range went from 100 to 400, guess I was wrong.) So this is my agenda for the first day:

0930 – 1730: (500) Tackling Top Reporting Services Issues by Adam Saxton (Microsoft CSS)

Day Two (April 22)

Again another day with lots of interesting sessions, too many unless I can find a way to split myself up for a while… Those in bold are the ones I’ll probably be choosing to attend.

0900 – 1030: (Keynote) The Evolution of Business Intelligence by Donald Farmer (Microsoft)

1045 – 1200: (400) Index Age 3—Dawn of the Filtered by Bodo Michael Danitz (sqlserver.de)

1045 – 1200: (300) Cooking with SSRS: Advanced Report Design Recipes by Paul Turley

1045 – 1200: (300) Implementing Common Business Calculations in DAX by Chris Webb (CrossJoin Consulting)

1300 – 1400: (300) Spatial Data in SQL Server 2008 and SQL 2008 R2: A Real World Application by Javier Loria (Solid Quality Mentors)

1300 – 1400: (???) Taking BI to the next level with in SQL Server 2008 R2 , SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 by Oliver Goletz & Martin Vach (Microsoft Germany)

1415 – 1515: (300) The Dirty Dozen: 12 Ways to Write Poorly Performing MDX Queries by Steve Simon (State Street Corporation)

1415 – 1515: (300) SQL & SSIS 2008 R2 Performance Optimizations by Henk van der Valk (Unisys)

1530 – 1630: (300) SQL Server and SharePoint – Best Practices by Steffen Krause (Microsoft Deutschland GmbH)

1645 – 1800: (400) ETL 3 Ways by Allen Mitchell (Konesans)

1645 – 1800: (500) Kerberos and the BI Stack by Adam Saxton (Microsoft CSS)

1645 – 1800: (300) The Top 10 Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale by Brent Ozar (Quest)

Day Three (April 23)

0830 – 1000: (???) Real Time Cubes by Thomas Kejser (MS SQL CAT Team)

1015 – 1130: (400) Blazing Fast Queries: When Indexes Are Not Enough by Davide Mauri (Solid Quality Mentors)

1145 – 1245: (400) StreamInsight by Allen Mitchell (Konesans)

1345 – 1445: (400) Cache-warming Strategies for Analysis Services 2008 by Chris Webb (Crossjoin Consulting)

1500 – 1600: (300) Building a Dashboard with PowerPivot, Reporting Services and PerformancePoint using PowerPivot in SharePoint by Kasper de Jonge (ADA ICT)

1500 – 1600: (300) Adaptive BI Best Practices by Davide Mauri (Solid Quality Mentors)

1615 – 1715: (???) Importance of Master Data Management by Markus Thomanek (Microsoft Germany)

Have fun!

Valentino.

Tags: Community Event, PASS

Free Event: 24 Hours of PASS

August 20, 2009 in SQL Server | No comments

If you don’t have anything planned on next September 2 and you’re interested in some free SQL Server-related learning: it’s the 24 Hours of PASS!

You can even stay in your lazy chair at home because it’s an online event, no worrying about bus/train/plane/hotel/… Just install the software (or browser plug-in, I actually don’t know because I haven’t performed the preparation procedure yet) and off you go.

I have registered for the following 5 sessions myself:

Session 10 (Dev) – Working with Spatial Data in SQL Server 2008 (Greg Low)
Session 11 (DBA) – Effective Indexing (Gail Shaw)
Session 12 (BI) – Reporting Services Inside Out the Things You Should Know (Simon Sabin)
Session 13 (Dev) – Query Performance Tuning 101 (Grant Fritchey)
Session 16 (DBA) – Database Compatibility Settings: What They Really Do .. and Don’t Do (Don Vilen)

Yep, it will be a busy holiday. That same day they’ll be delivering our new combi oven, ideally that would be right after session 13 ends. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I’ll be seeing you September 2? Or well, maybe not as it’s an online event…

Happy learning!

Tags: Community Event, data, PASS, SQL Server