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Showing posts from December, 2010

PASS Summit Final Thoughts

I've got to figure out how to get to the PASS Summit every year!  It was AWESOME! It was great to meet more of the tweeps I follow and reconnect with those that I've met before. It was my first time to Seattle also.  The weather was better than expected. I had a great time walking around the city when time allowed. I also had the opportunity to try the local restaurants and visit the Space Needle.  Everything was great.  Especially the coffee at Top Pot Doughnuts . Every time slot had several sessions I wanted to attend.  You can't get to all the sessions you would like so b uying the Conference DVDs is a must.   Participating in my local PASS user group, SQL Saturdays, and Twitter made being a FIRST TIMER at this year's PASS Summit a non-issue. I did not  feel like a FIRST TIMER. I knew a lot of people because of participating locally.  I just blended right in, had fun, and learned a ton. Being a FIRST TIMER, I didn't realize I could download the sli

PASS Summit Day 3

The final day of the PASS Summit started off with a great keynote speech by Dr. David DeWitt Ph.D talking about SQL Query Optimization.   Dr. DeWitt is currently a technical fellow at Microsoft leading the Jim Gray Systems Lab.  He said "Rocket Science is easier than query optimization." So, if you fail at query optimization, they send you to build rockets.  This was one of those presentations that will need to be watched multiple times before all the non-Ph.Ds like me assimilate everything. He did a great job explaining an unbelievably complex topic in terms most people can understand. It'll just take me a few passes to totally understand. I hope. DBA Mythbusters A fun interactive session with Paul Randal from SQLSkills.com with Buck Woody playing a supporting role. Buck said the interaction with Paul was not rehearsed. Too bad video doesn't make it on the conference DVDs. The PowerShell Cookbook for the DBA by Joe Webb Joe did an excellent overview of how

PASS Summit Day 2

Day 2 started off with Andy Warren's recommendation of Top Pot Doughnuts .   I normally exercise in the morning so the walk down to Top Pot was a nice equivalent.  Top Pot sits right in front of pylon 43 of the Space Needle monorail on 5th Street downtown. They have the mother of all glazed donuts and excellent coffee.  Coffee so smooth I could drink it black. That's significant. I don't like black coffee.  Day 2 was to be BI day for me at the PASS Summit  but it quickly turned into the search for Ola Hallengren.    I attended or wanted to attend the following sessions:  Automate SQL Server Administration with PowerShell by Allen White I've read a bunch of Allen's blog posts so I wanted to see him in person.  He did a broad overview of how to automate DBA tasks using PowerShell.  If you're a DBA wanting to learn PowerShell, Allen should be on your list of people of blog posts to read and one of your Follows on Twitter. I did see all of this presenta