SQLBits VII

Having gone to Wales for SQLBits 5 and London for SQLBits 6, it was time for SQLBits to head north. York was the destination for this autumninal conference for UK SQL Server professionals with the University being the venue. Once again - the venue, organisation and grub was excellent.

The training day i attended is a post on it's own, but I'll list the Friday and Saturday sessions I attended here. I'm not going to review sessions individually, as

1. i don't have time
2. taste is subjective
3. the internet is full enough of opinions
4. others will do a better job
5. the videos will end up on sqlbits.com and you can review them yourself.

Anyway, how I spent my SQLBits ...

Friday 1st October

Automating SSIS
Andre Kamman

SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning
Jamie Thomson

TSQL Techniques - How and Why to tune a routine
Dave Ballantyne

Common Analysis Services mistakes and how to avoid them
Chris Webb

The Developer Side of the Microsoft Business Stack
Sascha Lorenz

Saturday 2nd October

Designing and Tuning High Speed Data Loading
Thomas Kejser

SQL Server Storage - 1,000GB level
Brent Ozar

Monitoring and Tuning Parallel Query Execution - Part II
Ramesh Meyyappan

Alice's Adventures in Reporting Services
Jennifer Stirrup

SSIS Field Notes
Darren Green

The content was great and I was once again left with wanting to try everything out. This was followed by the grim realisation that my projects would not allow me to. In the breaks and evenings it was fun to finally meet some of the bloggers and sql tweeps i've been following.

Notable mentions go to Gavin Payne (blog | twitter) , Jonathan Allen (blog | twitter) , John Sansom (blog | twitter) , Mark Blakey (blog | twitter) , Phil Nolan (blog | twitter) , Rachel Clements (blog | twitter) and a very modest bloke (and SSIS legend) Jamie Thomson (blog | twitter).

Update : 04 November 2010 -

I'm linking the best of the SQLBits 7 posts.
These people have reviewed their SQLBits experiences properly...

Ashley Burton - SQLBits 7 Friday Rundown , SQLBits 7 Saturday Rundown

Jonathan Kehayias - SQLBits 7 Wrap Up

Jonathan Allen - SQLBits 7 - The Disappointment (food for thought  - the cost of those that failed to turn up)

Niall Best - SQLBits 7

Richard Back - SQLBits 7 Conference Report