SQLBits VI

The sixth SQLBits conference was in London last Friday at Church House Conference Centre, a stones throw from Westminster.

Not being short of lieu time or holiday a Friday conference fortunately wasn't a problem for me.
The organisers had once again attracted sufficient sponsorship to keep the event free. Not only were the sessions free, but so was the food (sausage/bacon rolls for breakfast, a generous packed lunch, cakes both mid-morning and afternoon and finally pizza to accompany beer and games). Coffee to keep tired brains alert was flowing throughout the day too.

The theme for SQLBits VI was 'Performance and Scalability' and my first mission was to which sessions to attend. There were 24 sessions (6 time slots x 4 rooms) split across 3 tracks (dba, dev, bi). Given I haven't yet mastered being in 2 places at once I had to decide what to attend.

Like a festival, the headlining acts are on in different arenas at the same time. This makes deciding what to attend a little awkward. Just how do you chose? Focus on technical content you're using now?, stuff you want to use? , attend the sessions because a speaker is entertaining?

Fortunately I recalled that the SQLBits V sessions (videos | blog entry) made their way onto the website which took the pressure off. I won't really miss anything after all. With some sessions being content rich, I have found myself downloading and watching them a number of times, pausing, rewinding etc. This fact added a further tactic to assist me with my session choices, to save the 'level 400' ones for later.

In the end, I attended the following sessions (largely opting for Dev/BI choices) >

Design Patterns for SSIS Performance
Darren Green

Fast Track Foundations : Sequential IO
James Rowland-Jones  | Allan Mitchell

Performance & Scalability through normalisation & set theory
Tony Rogerson

Denormalisation - Having your cake and eating it
Mark Whitehorn  & Yasmeen Ahmed

Optimizing tempdb and temporary object use
Christian Bolton

Designing and Tuning High Speed Data Loading
Thomas Kejser

I enjoyed them all, and (as usual) made note of several subjects for further reading (Like my 'to-do' list needed lengthening). The first and last sessions I attended were of most immediate use for my SSIS endeavours. Like the other attendees, I'm eagerly awaiting the upload of the session videos (and not just to see if I'm in them - Hello mum!).

PS : Anyone reading this post who is thinking of coming to a SQLBits event, don't just think about it, DO IT! You'll learn nuggets of practical information in a single day direct from db/bi experts.

PPS : A big thank you to the team, the sponsors and for a certain competition prize ;)

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.