SQLBits V

I attended the excellent (and free) SQLBits conference this weekend.
A lot of great speakers, and an overload of information! I also got in for free on the SQL/Windows 2008 R2 day , thanks to Andrew Fryer @ Microsoft throwing a free ticket my way.

It was interesting to see the current fad that is twitter heavily in use, with attendees using the hashtag #sqlbits to provide instant feedback and meet up. Iphones and tweeting have infiltrated the sql community far more than i had realised.

I saw a range of speakers and have come away with multiple notes to add to my task list and future goals. The majority of sessions were filmed so hopefully the material will be available shortly at the sqlbits website. The speakers I saw are listed below with links to their blogs.

Keynote and Powerpivot demo
Donald Farmer

When a query plan goes wrong
Simon Sabin

SSIS in SQL Server 2008
Allan Mitchell

T-SQL Tuning
Brent Ozar

Powershell – old tricks for a new dog
Martin Bell

Optimistic Concurrency Internals
James Rowland-Jones

SQL Server optimization stuff you won’t find on Google (yet)
Andre Kamman

In addition to the SQL & BI content there were lunchtime sponsor sessions by many vendors. On both Friday and Saturday I attended 2 excellent sessions presented by Mark Whitehorn, explained much better here by Ash.