Speaking at SNESSUG
I’ll be presenting tonight at the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group (SNESSUG). The topic is “Using DMVs as a Shortcut to Query Tuning.” It’s a practice run for my spotlight session at the PASS Summit, so if you can’t make it to the Summit, you should swing by Rhode Island.
In the Clouds
The July meeting for the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group is tonight. Andrew Novick will be talking about SQL Azure. It’ll be a great meeting. Our sponsor is Red Gate. They bought pizza.
SNESSUG 4/14/2010
Tonight’s Southern New England SQL Server Users group is sponsored by Idera. Our presenter is Scott Abrants of Iron Mountain. He’s talking about deploying databases using Visual Studio Team System:Database Edition. We have a good turnout with 12 people (yeah, we’re small).
Scott’s presentation was a lot of fun and very informative. He’s very involved with automating his deployments to a fare-thee-well. He really has Visual Studio dancing and singing. It was a very thorough overview of the VSTS:DBE soltuion. Other user groups should be jealous that we got to see this presentation.
Southern New England SQL Server Users Group
Tomorrow, Wednesday April 14th, is the next SNESSUG meeting. We’re going to get a great presentation from Scott Abrants on using Visual Studio Team System for database deployments. I saw Scott presenting this at SQL Saturday:Boston to a packed room. If you didn’t get to see it then, come on down to Rhode Island tomorrow evening. You won’t be sorry.
SNESSUG March Meeting
Aaron Bertrand showed up to teach us tips and tricks for SQL Server Management Studio. We had to move our meeting night because of a conflict at our wonderful host, New England Tech. But we still had 12 people show up. For SNESSUG, that was a good turnout. I gave away some swag that I had received from Microsoft and some stuff that we had purchased. Bribary works (at least that’s my theory, so feel free to bribe me, whenever).
Aaron’s presentation was great. He’s just showing nothing but meat. There’s no fluff. He’s just showing a series of tips & tricks in SSMS and explains why you want to use them. First revelation, -nosplash has no effect whatsoever on load time. He called it a placebo. It just kept going from there. Aaron’s stated goal was to make everyone in the audience say “wow” or “cool” at some point during the presentation. I’m pretty sure he succeeded. The first one that got a lot of people is when he demonstrated setting the connection color so you can track different connections visually on your screen. My personal one was the Registered Servers import list so you can maintain a common list, move copies around, share registered server lists within your team… I love learning stuff at a good presentation.
Oh yeah, and everyone said “wow” or “cool” at least once.
New England Data Camp v2/SQL Saturdy #34 Update
The second annual New England Data Camp is shaping up to one excellent event. We’ve put together a great set of sponsors. Thanks to them we’re providing much better food than last year and the chance at a bit of swag, again, better than last year. But, most importantly, we have an excellent selection of speakers. The schedule has been posted so you can go and check it out and start laying out which ones you can hit. Some of the people speaking are known internationally (Adam Machanic, Aaron Bertrand), some are local luminaries, some are up and coming, and several are probably on the fast track to being MVP’s. In other words, this is the place to go to learn something about SQL Server in New England.
It’s not too late to register, and of course you can register at the door. It’s a free event and, as you can see, it’s going to be very educational and useful.
And don’t forget your local user groups. Southern New England SQL Server Users Group has Adam Machanic speaking this Wednesday, and on a different topic than he’s presenting at the Data Camp, so it’ll be worth visiting both.
SNESSUG September Meeting
We had a good night with 13 people attending. I ran unopposed for president of SNESSUG for my second, and final, term. We were graced with the prescence of Jeff Moden, MVP and on of the top posters over at SQL Server Central. He was just visiting. He’s a great guy and I was very happy for the chance to meet him in person. Jeff is going to be at the PASS Summit this year, so you too can have a chance to meet him.
The presentation was on SSAS and SSRS by Sunil Kadimdiwan. He did a full introduction of cubes from Excel to Analysis Services, all with the purpose of showing how to generate good reports using Reporting Services. Attendees were very interested in some of the security settings for Analysis Services. Sunil walked us through the use of BIDS, or Business Intelligence Development Studio, to build & modify cubes. The presentations were well received. Interestingly enough, he used very few slides and spent all his time working through examples.
Then, the fire alarm went off. We lost about 20 minutes.
Sunil came back in and finished up on Reporting Services. He’s a trooper.
PASS Chapter Spotlight
The Southern New England SQL Server Users Group was picked for the February spotlight on the PASS web site. This was largely based on the work we did helping Adam Machanic run the New England Data Camp. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we helped. Adam did 90% of the work. It’s still good to be singled out. Thanks PASS and thanks to the volunteers at SNESSUG.
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