Strate SQL

Tap, Tap, Tap – SSWUG Conference Starts Today

Jason Strate — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:00:00 GMT

The SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference starts this morning. Are you planning to take advantage of this opportunity? The Rock Star speakers are waiting in the channels, anticipating you every move. But, have you registered?

It’s not too late. If you can’t get to the sessions today, there is always tonight to go through and view them. Just check out what the conference includes.

More than 75 technical sessions
New! Live sessions track - all live sessions, with speaker Q&A/interviews at the end of the day
On-Demand access to sessions for 45 days - miss a session? No problem.
Chat, Twitter Integration, SKYPE integration for Q&A
Experience-based learning - find out what you need to know from people that are using the technology every day
These are NOT sales presentations.
6-Month SSWUG.ORG Membership (or membership extension), included!
ALL-ACCESS Pass: SQL Server and Business Intelligence with related SharePoint and .NET technologies - all included, one low price
Great vendor hall - learn about the best tools, technologies, publications and partners out there for your shop

Hope in and join the conference! I’ll be there after my morning meeting.

Are You Registered?

Jason Strate — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT

It starts next week,the SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference on October 21-24. This is an excellent opportunity to get the benefits of heading to a conference full of Rock Star speakers while being able to view the content from the comforts of home or your desk.

Have you registered?

If you haven’t registered yet, I really recommend that you do. Heck, you can even use this discount (SPJSUVC09) to save a little on the registration. But I’ve told you what to do, have I told you why. Well, let’s take a look at some bullet points that describe the conference: ~~‘Cuz we all like bullet points.~~

More than 75 technical sessions
New! Live sessions track - all live sessions, with speaker Q&A/interviews at the end of the day
On-Demand access to sessions for 45 days - miss a session? No problem.
Chat, Twitter Integration, SKYPE integration for Q&A
Experience-based learning - find out what you need to know from people that are using the technology every day
These are NOT sales presentations.
6-Month SSWUG.ORG Membership (or membership extension), included!
ALL-ACCESS Pass: SQL Server and Business Intelligence with related SharePoint and .NET technologies - all included, one low price
Great vendor hall - learn about the best tools, technologies, publications and partners out there for your shop

Are you jazzed? Wait, I didn’t make you laugh. Good sales pitches always include some laughter. One more bullet point:

The conference that started the best SQL Server humor threads

Yeah, that’s right. And there just might be more humor at the one coming up. So let’s get signed up.

Missing Blogger

Jason Strate — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:05:00 GMT

I’ve been skipping on posting technical blogs for a couple months. I’m planning to put that issue to rest with some aggressive blogging over the next couple months to make up for lost time. After reading SQL Fool’s post on her reasons for change, I figured I’d do the same. Not because anyone has noticed but because I want to lay out a plan that I’ll stick to.

Making Excuses

I don’t have any reasons as good as a baby in my belly for why I haven’t been blogging so much. But I’ll share my reasons nonetheless

PASSMN SQL Summit 2009: Our user group put together an all-day Friday SQL event. It was great and a lot of fun. We had nearly 100 people there for the entire day and from the surveys that I saw it was a wild success. Now to see if I can inspire people for a SQL Saturday in the spring.
Presenting: I’m sure others have been doing this as much as I have but I’m still fairly green at this and it takes time to put them all together. On the up side, after this month I have one left for the entire year.
The House: It’s being sold and now I have to finish all of my house projects. Saying I am good at starting them and not finishing them is the understatement of the year.

The “Plan”

There are a number of things I plan to touch on relatively quickly. Some of these topics are:

More DBA Diagnostics: Let’s be honest, database administration is always a good topic and this conversation never even hit the good stuff. Such as backups or index and statistic maintenance. I even have reports that go with some of this stuff.
My journey into MDM: I’ve talked to a number of clients in the past few months about MDM. Amazingly, as knew as this topic seems to be, it is just new framework around an old problem. I am hoping to cover MDM from the basics to the implementation and examples of past projects that could be considered “partial” MDM solutions.
Web Testing: Recently, I worked on testing a SharePoint site that was using Reporting Services in Integrated Mode. I found out quite a bit when it came to testing SSRS reports and controlling report functionality through a web test. I plan to share as much of that as I can.
Extended Events: I really love these and hope to help others love them as well.
Implementing Best Practices: I’ve been working with Policy Based management for a work project and plan to develop some policies to implement and monitor best practices and share those on here.
Presentations: I’ve delivered about a dozen different presentations over the past year. Most of the time when I want to learn something I either find a project or a presentation that forces me to learn it. It’s my method. Well, I’ve got this library of useful stuff now and plan to share that here as well.

Hopefully I can get this interesting again… and very soon.

User Group Study Groups… Anyone?

Jason Strate — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Somehow I managed to get through college without ever joining a study group. None… ever. I don’t even know how one would put one together properly. Well, I do know from watching movies that someone is always responsible for bringing brownies or some other treat to share. But I don’t think that’s the main goal.

My main understanding is that you get a bunch of people together that are motivated toward a common goal and because of the diversity of the group you have immediate resources on hand to answer or bounce questions off of.

So this leaves me with some questions:

Does anyone have any experience with putting together study groups for working towards certifications?
If so, what are some must-dos and gotchas that are important for success?
Would anyone in the Twin Cities metro area be interested in joining a study group?

SQL Server Certification Discounts

Jason Strate — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:18:00 GMT

I like discounts. Paying full price when I don’t have to sucks. It’s a waste of resources, and as a person who’s had to tune databases in the past I’ve grown quite fond of resource management. And the best resource ever to manage is dollars. Because you can buy stuff.

What About 2nd Chance?

I was a big fan of the 2nd Chance Exam offer that Microsoft used to have. This offer allowed you to take the exam with an insurance policy that if you failed the first time, it was free to re-take once. For every exam I took over the past two years, I used that offer. That is, until it was allowed to expire. ~~Sad face.~~

The New Offer

Microsoft is offering a new discount on exams from 15% to 25% off the exam price. These exam discounts are available for both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. The offer is available until the December 31, so it is a limited time offer. Of course, this doesn’t include any guarantee that you’ll pass the exam but you can’t have a chance to pass them if you don’t give it a try.

Get Your Discount

Now that we have a new discount, we should take advantage of it. Just think, if you take a few exams and save enough bucks and I bet you could justify going out to eat at Fogo. Bring on the meat!

Checking EXISTS – What’s Your Practice?

Jason Strate — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Michael Swart (Database Whisperer) posted a great write up and interview with Brad Schulz that is worth checking out. Michael’s post links to a post from Brad on the use of EXIST and what is required for the SELECT portion of the statement. ~~Hope you are still with me.~~

Definitely worth the read and +1 for my blog subscriber list.

As he demonstrates, it doesn’t matter whether you use SELECT *, SELECT 1 or SELECT 1/0. If you want to know what this means, please read his post.

From SQL Server’s perspective, it doesn’t consider any of this information in preparing the results. The only thing that matters and this is from a practices perspective is to select a style for writing EXISTS statements and sticking to it.

To Be Or Not To Be In the Memory Buffer

Jason Strate — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Sometimes when I get pulled in to look at a database, I’ll sit down with the developers or database administrators working on the database and get some background on the database. This usually includes pointing on the important tables, an explanation of why some design decisions were made, and some pre-conceived notions about where to begin focusing.

I’m going to pass on going through my triage process today, but instead focus on the notion of important tables. This is an area that I often get to provide some immediate feedback to the client.

The Importance in Being Important

How does one define an important data?

The most data? This seems a no-brainer but don’t archive tables tend to usually be pretty large and by being archive, maybe no longer important data.
The most recently updated data? Probably not, this could have been the StateProvince tables because Jim in marketing decided that Puerto Rico should be a country now. ~~Yeah, I worked at a place where some days it was a country and others a territory.~~
The most sensitive data? While a customer may feel the security of their data is the most important aspect of the data in your database. If I’m out looking into performance issues, it might not be a consideration in this scenario.
The most active data? This is usually where I tend to focus. Data that is being used is probably the most important data in the system. Especially if a lot of the data is being used.

Finding the Most Active Data

To find the active data, a good place to start looking would be in the memory buffer. Since data that is most actively being used will hang out there it is a good indicator of what your active data is. By looking at the data in memory, you can start to make decisions on which tables and indexes to pay a little more attention to. The trouble with this approach though will be that data used now may not be used later.

But that might be exactly the problem. If you know that an un-indexed archive table is never used and the entire table is in memory, that may be the source of some problems. Something had to move out of memory for something to move into it.

Below is the T-SQL Script that I used to determine what is in the buffer. It is scoped to the database level so you would need to run this multiple times across a few databases to see what is going on for the entire server.

;WITH AllocationUnits
AS (
    SELECT 
        p.object_id
        ,p.index_id
        ,p.partition_number 
        ,au.allocation_unit_id
    FROM sys.allocation_units AS au
        INNER JOIN sys.partitions AS p ON au.container_id = p.hobt_id AND (au.type = 1 OR au.type = 3)
    UNION ALL
    SELECT p.object_id
        ,p.index_id
        ,p.partition_number 
        ,au.allocation_unit_id
    FROM sys.allocation_units AS au
        INNER JOIN sys.partitions AS p ON au.container_id = p.partition_id AND au.type = 2
)
SELECT t.name as table_name
    ,i.name as index_name
    ,i.[type_desc]
    ,au.partition_number
    ,COUNT(*) AS buffered_page_count
    ,CONVERT(decimal(12,2), CAST(COUNT(*) as bigint)*CAST(8 as float)/1024) as buffer_mb
FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors AS bd 
    INNER JOIN AllocationUnits au ON bd.allocation_unit_id = au.allocation_unit_id
    INNER JOIN sys.all_objects t ON au.object_id = t.object_id
    INNER JOIN sys.indexes i ON au.object_id = i.object_id AND au.index_id = i.index_id
WHERE bd.database_id = db_id()
GROUP BY t.name, i.name,i.[type_desc], au.partition_number
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC

HINT: Try running this on MSDB some time right after database backups. I’ve run into a few cases where backup tables haven’t been cleaned up in ages and the amount of data in those tables bumps a lot of user data out of the buffer while performing backups. Not the most ideal situation.

Free SQL Server Security Book

Jason Strate — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:00:00 GMT

I saw this post a few weeks back and got around to downloading it myself tonight. If you don’t know what it is. It’s a free SQL Server security book.

Best of both Worlds

There are two things I like about this e-book. The first, it is free. And the second, it’s a book on security which there will never be enough of. Sadly, security is one of those areas that seem to be overlooked until it is often too late.

Don’t miss out! Oct 21 – IT Care - Painting by Numbers, Update Your SQL Skills with New Paintbrushes

Jason Strate — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:29:00 GMT

Coming up this month is a free event to discover more ways to write T-SQL here is an event for you. The session will be hosted by yours truly and features T-SQL tricks and tips that I’ve picked up and want to spread the word on.

Here is the registration link.

And the details:

Course Overview

ITCare, delivered and hosted quarterly by our Partners is designed to keep you up to date on the cutting-edge technologies. ITCare is a FREE half-day technical seminar series created by IT Professionals for IT Professionals! We'll address the needs and issues today and show you how to make a real difference in the way that you work.

Objectives

While not everyone may not be a great painter, there is an art form to writing great SQL statements. In this session we'll go over tips and tricks in writing SQL. We'll also review some popular bad practices and provide demonstrations to better change those velvet Elvis's to Rembrandts. As every paint brush can't produce a masterpiece, the same goes for SQL statements. Writing good SQL code requires the right brush. After this session, you'll have a few more paintbrushes and probably throw out a few that are no longer useful.
1. Review and discussion of common coding methods can impact performance.
2. Discussion of uncommon coding methods that can be used to improve performance.
3. Review and application of existing T-SQL functions.
Audience

Junior to mid-level SQL Server developers

Prerequisites

Understanding of basic T-SQL coding skills.

Course Price

$0.00

Topics

Speaker: Jason Strate of Digineer, Inc. Jason Strate has been a Database Architect for over ten years. His experiences include designing and implementing both OLAP and OLTP solutions involving clustering servers, database monitoring and tuning, analysis services, DTS/Integration Services, Reporting Services, and Notification Services. Jason is actively involved with the local PASS chapter (SQL Server User Group); he is currently serving on the Executive Board and has presented at monthly meetings. Jason contributed to Microsoft's published white paper "Empowering Enterprise Solutions with SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and actively blogs about SQL Server and related technologies. Also this past year, Jason participated in the development of Microsoft Certification exams for SQL Server 2008 and presented at the SSWUG SQL Server Launch Event and the last two SSWUG Virtual SQL Server Conferences.

User Group Networking Bingo

Jason Strate — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I’ve been to a number of conferences and have always found it difficult to walk up to people that I don’t know and introduce myself. It’s just not something that comes natural to me. And I’ve found that this typically isn’t a strength of other people in the IT community.

When we were planning our recent event, a full day event similar to SQL Saturday but on a Friday, I wanted to add something that got people to meet people that they didn’t know and start some networking.

Lara Rubbelke (@SQLGal) suggested that we try doing a bingo card. It had been used for a recent event she had attended and it seemed like a good idea. And fit the concept I was thinking of – getting lots of people to talk to strangers and get to know people outside their typical bubble.

The Game

To set this up, we put together a word document that looked like a Bingo card with 12 squares. The purpose was for each attendee to find someone that matched a square and get their initials. We used the following items on our card.

Attended DBA Track Session
Attended Developer Track Session
Attended BI Track Session
SQL Server 2008 in production
SQL Server version prior to 2005 in production
Presented PASSMN SQL Summit Session
1+ TB database in production
Passed SQL Server 2005/2008 Certification
Service Broker in Production
Blogs on SQL Server
PASSMN LinkedIn Member
Microsoft Employee
Twitters
SQL Server MVP
Used SQL Server 4.1 ~~Yes, this guys was at our event.~~

The Payoff

Instead of just using survey’s for giveaways at the end of the event, we opted to use the Networking Bingo card to drive people to try to complete the card. This turned out to be huge. People were chatting and networking and some people managed to care all of the squares on the bingo card before the first break.

The real payoff was the amount of networking that we had between the sessions. Instead of sitting at the tables waiting for the next session, most people were up and about meeting and talking to people. Some people came up and mentioned how much they enjoyed a reason to network for a change.

It was awesome!

I’ve attached our bingo card, so feel free to use it for your own event.

PASSMN SQL Summit Networking Bingo.docx

Check out the Ultimate Virtual Conference from SSWUG

Jason Strate — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT

In less than a month SSWUG will be hosting the Ultimate Virtual Conference on October 21-24. This is an excellent opportunity to get the benefits of heading to a conference full of Rock Star speakers while be able to view the content from the comforts of home or your desk.

Reasons to Attend

Some of the details of the event are:

More than 75 technical sessions
New! Live sessions track - all live sessions, with speaker Q&A/interviews at the end of the day
On-Demand access to sessions for 45 days - miss a session? No problem.
Chat, Twitter Integration, SKYPE integration for Q&A
Experience-based learning - find out what you need to know from people that are using the technology every day
These are NOT sales presentations.
6-Month SSWUG.ORG Membership (or membership extension), included!
ALL-ACCESS Pass: SQL Server and Business Intelligence with related SharePoint and .NET technologies - all included, one low price
Great vendor hall - learn about the best tools, technologies, publications and partners out there for your shop

If that doesn’t jazz you up, then maybe know that one of the best SQL Server humor threads started at the last SSWUG Virtual Conference.

StrateSQL Sessions

I’ll be presenting four sessions at the SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference. My sessions will be:

Solving Business Pains with SQL Server Integration Services

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) offers a wide range of features and functionality that can be used to solve business pains within Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processes. These pains can be caused by the performance of current ETL process, the maintainability of ETL processes or represent a new pain that SSIS features can resolve. This presentation will provide a demonstration of real world scenarios where features of SSIS were used to solve business pains through modification of existing SSIS packages or through the creation of new SSIS packages. The session will also discuss current best practices in SSIS package design.

Necessarily Evils, Building Optimized CRUD Procedures

Every developer loves them and a lot of DBAs hate them. But there are many and valid reasons for creating generic SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE procedures. In this session, we’ll go through designing CRUD procedures that utilize new and existing SQL features to create CRUD procedures that are optimized for performance.

Improving Daily Imports with Partitioned Tables

At some point, everyone struggles with loading data to OLTP systems. The business needs the data loaded so that users can work through the data. But the users can’t afford the downtime to get the data into the production tables. In this session we’ll review this problem and how to use partitioning to alleviate this issue.

Are You Following Your Own Best Practices?

Everyone has their own best practices that they try to follow. But often times we aren’t sure how well we are following our own or industry best practices. In this session we’ll go into monitoring and managing best practices throughout your environment. The session will look at how to create a solution using policy based management and other tools to report on your compliance to best practices.

One More Reason

For those budget conscious in the current economy, I can even offer a discount code to help nudge those that haven’t quite given in to joining the conference. With these nine letters you can received a $10 discount off your registration… SPJSUVC09

The Final Pitch

I lied about the one more reason, I’ve got to give one more pitch.

It’s not often that conferences give us the ability to attend all of the sessions that we want when we want to. With the stellar lineup of presenters and the deep content that is flexible to each persons schedule I highly recommend attending this conference.

September PASSMN Meeting Tonight

Jason Strate — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

The Minnesota SQL Server user group (PASSMN) meeting is tonight at the Microsoft offices. Come check us out to network and mingle with your peers and also for the opportunity to learn some new things.

Tonight’s topics are:

If you have questions or need more information on the meeting, feel free to contact me on twitter at@StrateSQL or though email at jstrate@digineer.com.

Checkout PASSMN Meeting Next Week

Jason Strate — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Just one week until the next PASSMN meeting. As I mentioned last week, this month we’ll be focusing a bit on performance. And yeah, guys with lights coming out of his body means performance… or it might be just a great party. Come out and join the discussion with a snack and some great presentations.

SQL Server and Partition Alignment & Wait-Time Based Performance Management

September 15th
2:30 PM Networking & Social
3:00 PM Announcements
3:15 PM - 5:15 PM Presentations

8300 Norman Center Drive
9th Floor
Bloomington, MN 55437

If that wasn’t enough to make you want to want to show up, here are the presentation details…

SQL Server and Partition Alignment

Speaker: Jimmy May, Microsoft
Now that SQL Server wait stats are formally documented & DMVs are available, disk partition alignment may be the best kept secret related to database performance optimization. In combination with stripe unit size & file allocation unit size, learn how you can increase I/O throughput by 10%, 30%, & under some circumstances even more. Many customers are unaware of partition alignment. Even experienced disk administrators may be unfamiliar with it. Explanations are often initially met with disbelief. Engineers familiar with the topic may underestimate its importance. For example, some customers think it is useful only for Microsoft Exchange Server. In fact, partition alignment is important for all servers from which high performance is expected, especially SQL Server. Each month I encounter customers with unaligned storage. Until existing misaligned partitions created using Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server are rebuilt properly, disk partition alignment will remain a relevant technology.

Jimmy May is a Principal Performance Engineer for Microsoft’s Assessment, Consulting, & Engineering (A.C.E.) Services & works for Team Lee. He is the Founder & Visionary-in-Chief of SQL Server Pros & was formerly the Senior Database Architect for one of the world’s largest OLTP DBs. He is a founder & on the executive committees of both the Indiana Windows User Group & Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server . Jimmy lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his lovely bride, Phyllis, & Fannie May the Wonder Dog. Subscribe to & read his blog at msdn.blogs.com/jimmymay. Contact him at jimmymay@microsoft.com or aspiringgeek@live.com.

Wait-Time Based Performance Management

Speaker: Janis Griffin, Confio
Using Wait Time Analysis and Wait Types is a newer method for tuning SQL Server instances. As a result, there is often confusion on exactly what the data means. The issue typically centers around the fact the wait time data is analyzed at the wrong level or the collected wait time data is not detailed enough. This presentation will focus on these problems and review several real-life case studies of using SQL Server Wait Type data coupled with Wait-Time based performance analysis to solve the most difficult performance related issues.

Janis Griffin has over 20 years of DBA experience including design, development and implementation of many critical database applications. Before coming to Confio, Janis held DBA positions primarily in the Telecom Industry (15 yrs), working with both real-time network routing databases and OLTP business to business applications.

Report Manager in Windows 7

Jason Strate — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:00:00 GMT

While working on some questions for a project I am working on, I ran into an issue with Report Manager today. I haven’t had the pleasure of running into this issue in a while and thought I would share the issue and the resolution because it affects both Windows 7 and Vista.

Between this time and the previous few times I’ve dealt with this, I’ve spent more than time that I should on it and it does telegraph well into a second issue that I’ll talk about at the end. And the easiest way for me to remember things is to write them down.

Your First Time

When going into Report Manager for the first time after installing it on my laptop I got the following screen:

Not a very exciting screen. Reporting Services is nice and secure because, as a user, I couldn’t do anything. But since doing something was what was needed, figuring this out was required.

I started by going out and checking the Reporting Services configuration. When the configuration tool is opened in Windows 7 and Vista it asks the user if they want to allow the program to make changes to the computer.

Ah-ha! Security?!

I never setup any security for Reporting Services after the installation. By default, Reporting Services makes the BUILTIN\Administrators account an administrator to Reporting Services. I was running Internet Explorer but I wasn’t running it as a user, not as an administrator. So while I was using

Setting Up The First User

To get started, start up Internet Explorer as an administrator. To do this right-click on Internet Explorer in the menu and select “Run as administrator”. ~~BTW, you should check out Live Mesh if you haven’t it’s great for synchronizing folders.~~

Next go to Site Settings and select the Security tab. You’ll notice that only the BUILTIN\Administrators have access after the installation. This was the problem initially because Internet Explorer from regular launch didn’t acknowledge these permissions.

Select New Role Assignment and add yourself in as a System Administrator.

Next go to Home and select Properties and go to the Security tab.

Select New Role Assignment and add yourself in as a Content Manager.

Now close Internet Explorer and open it back up. Browse to the Reporting Services site and you should be able to do everything you expected to be able to do before.

Bad Default Behavior?

Now, you might be thinking this is all pointless and definitely a bug. Truthfully it’s not, Internet Explorer is running under minimum permissions which you really want it to do. The lower the permissions that you are cruising the internet with, the better. ~~Unless you like viruses then the worse.~~

Also, the BUILTIN\Administrators account should be removed as a user and administrator from Reporting Services as soon as the “real” administrators have been added. No sense leaving a whole in your Reporting Services site for administrators from other systems to get access to reports that they shouldn’t have access to.

Hey Minnesotans – PASSMN SQL Summit

Jason Strate — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:45:00 GMT

Trying to figure out what to do between now and the PASS Summit this fall? If you are hanging out in the Twin Cities, then your local PASS chapter has some new for you. Announcing our first local full-day summit coming up at the end of this month.

September 25, 2009
8:30 PM - 3:45 PM
Microsoft Office - 9th Floor
8300 Norman Center Drive
Bloomington, MN
Register Here or visit http://www.mnssug.org/

The day will be choke full of FREE training, networking, food, refreshments and prizes. We will be having 4 different break-out sessions along 3 different tracks. Expect sessions from MVPs, vendors and everyone in between.

Training for Everyone

There will be 4 session times with a choice of Application Development, Database Administration and Business Intelligence. Below is the schedule of the sessions. The actual session names and presenters will be available shortly.

PASSMN SQL Summit 2009 Schedule

8:30 to 9:30	Registration and Breakfast
9:30 to 10:30	Session 1
10:30 to 10:45	Break
10:45 to 11:45	Session 2
11:45 to 1:00	Lunch
1:00 to 2:00	Session 3
2:00 to 2:15	Break with Snack
2:15 to 3:15	Session 4
3:15 to 3:45	Survey collection and Prizes

Special Thanks to PASS and Our Members

Part of the reason this event is possible is because last year we had a large number of members that went to the PASS Summit last year and who registered as member of our user group. Because of that, PASS provided us with the sponsorship that is being used for our lunch.

Registration is Important

Due to the room sizes for this event we are limited to 120 attendees, be certain to register.

PASSMN September Meeting

Jason Strate — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Just two weeks away is the next PASSMN meeting. This month we’ll be focusing a bit on performance and to emphasis this point I found a picture of someone moving so fast that light emanates from their body.

SQL Server and Partition Alignment & Wait-Time Based Performance Management

September 15th
2:30 PM Networking & Social
3:00 PM Announcements
3:15 PM - 5:15 PM Presentations

8300 Norman Center Drive
9th Floor
Bloomington, MN 55437

If that wasn’t enough to make you want to want to show up, here are the presentation details…

SQL Server and Partition Alignment

Wait-Time Based Performance Management

August PASSMN Meeting Tonight

Jason Strate — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Tonight’s topics are:

If you have questions or need more information on the meeting, feel free to contact me on twitter at @StrateSQL or though email at jstrate@digineer.com.

This Week Only PASSMN Meeting (August 18)

Jason Strate — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Well… until next month of course. If you’re in Minnesota and reading this… and don’t mind sharing some snacks with other like minded SQL professional… then come down and join us for this month’s SQL Server user group meeting.

We’ll be in a different location for this month – across the skyway from the normal meeting spot. But that puts us right over a coffee shop… not a bad tradeoff for the coffee drinkers in the the group.

Without ado here are this month’s topics…

Syntactic Sugar Sweetens the SQL Server Pot & Discover and Manage SQL Server in the Enterprise

August 18, 2009
3:00 PM - 5:15 PM
2nd Floor Classroom - 8000 Building
8000 Norman Center Drive
Bloomington, MN

Syntactic Sugar Sweetens the SQL Server Pot

Speaker: Mark Knutson, Hennepin Faculty Associates

Among the many new features of SQL Server 2005 were some SQL additions that both improve performance as well as simplify complex queries. I have used these countless times and found them quite handy. These include Common Table Expressions, the analytical ranking functions, and aggregations. I will discuss how these work and provide some SQL examples.

Mark Knutson is the Senior Internet Architect at Hennepin Faculty Associates. In this capacity, he administers SQL Server and Oracle database servers, SharePoint Services, IIS, and Hyper-V virtualization server. He also leads a small development team which creates web applications using .NET and C#, and is working on the Cisco CCENT/CCNA certifications.

Discover and Manage SQL Server in the Enterprise

Speaker: Lara Rubbelke, Microsoft

Do you know where SQL Server is installed in your enterprise? Are you absolutely sure you know? Really? Are you looking for a free tool to help you learn where SQL Server is installed? Once you know, are you looking for a better way to manage all of the instances in your enterprise? Learn how to leverage SQL Server 2008 features and enhancements complemented with free tools to discover and centrally manage all of the SQL Server in your enterprise. This session will dive deep into the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit and the Central Management Server, with a special focus on configuring, securing and leveraging the CMS for multi-instance management and configuration.

Lara Rubbelke brings her passion for architecting, implementing and improving SQL Server solutions to the community as a Technology Specialist for Microsoft. Her expertise involves both OLTP and OLAP systems, data management, performance tuning, encryption, ETL, and the Business Intelligence lifecycle. She is an active board member of the local PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) chapter and regularly delivers technical presentations at local, regional and national conferences, user groups and webcasts. Lara authored the Microsoft whitepaper detailing SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition features and was a contributing author of "Expert SQL Server 2005 Development". Prior to joining Microsoft, Lara was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

Psst… It’s Free!

Jason Strate — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The PASS Summit is coming up in just a few short months. Have you had a chance to make your arrangement? If you are like many, the down economy may be cutting into the budget that typically goes towards these events.

If you hadn’t heard, the screaming baby on the side wants you to know that Idera and MSSQLTips have teamed up with an All Expenses Paid Trip to the SQL PASS Summit.

The contest goes through August 25, but don’t wait until the last moment. There are drinks at the happy hour with your name on it, you just need to claim them.

August PASSMN Meeting (August 18)

Jason Strate — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Coming up in a couple weeks is the next PASSMN meeting. We’ll be in a different location for this month – across the skyway from the normal meeting spot. But that puts us right over a coffee shop… not a bad tradeoff for the coffee drinkers in the the group.