The SQL UPDATE Statement

I know this is a bit late but you know what they say, better late than never! This month’s meeting was quite exciting as we had a big-name speaker come in. This month we had Kevin Kline (Blog | Twitter) of Quest Software come in and speak to us about Disk I/O Tuning on SQL Server.

Typically our meetings kick off with announcements and general discussion but because we had Kevin this month (he was in town for SQLSaturday #21) we let Kevin have as much time as possible so we skipped our normal routine and got right to it! First off Kevin is a fantastic speaker and has a real easy-going presentation style which I really enjoyed. Many times during the presentation felt more like a dialogue as he engaged the audience on many topics. One of the great things about a speaker engaging the audience as such is that more nuggets of information can come out that sometimes even the presenter wasn’t aware of. For instance during one exchange between Kevin and Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) something came up (pardon me for taking horrible notes and not remembering exactly what it was!) but it was something new to Kevin. The meat of the presentation (Slide deck can be found here) was geared much towards explaining the different RAID types and their respective benefits within a SQL Server implementation. Other great disk information such as partition alignment (which you DEFINITELY want to do as it nets you up to 30-40% performance gain!), which perfmon counters you should focus on to baseline/monitor your disk performance, SQL file configurations (i.e. multiple data files), SAN tips/tricks/gotchas, and more. One really cool tidbit that Kevin shared with us, in regards to seeing real-world performance examples, is the online MMORPG EVE Online is actually back-ended with SQL Servers all on solid state drives (SSD)! How cool is that? Here’s an article on it and how they benefitted from using this technology.

Overall it was a great meeting and a huge “thank you” to Kevin for speaking at our group this month! If you ever get the chance to catch a Kevin Kline presentation I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re going to PASS Summit this year Kevin will be presenting The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit (Database Administration) as well as Team Management Crash Course (Professional Development). If the Team Management one is the same presentation as the one he gave during the 24 Hours of SQL PASS event I HIGHLY recommend you attend that one as there are some great bits of information in there!

Next month on November 17th our presenter will be Jonathan Kehayias presenting Understanding SQL Server Memory Management. Visit the user group website and register to attend.

Well the title says it all and you’re thinking “well obviously we’ll see it live if we’re there” but that’s not the big news: I’ll be broadcasting my SQLSaturday sessions via LiveMeeting this Saturday! That’s right, for those who can’t make it and want to get a taste of SQLSaturday, join us in my sessions over the internet! Big thanks to Jermiah Peschka (Blog | Twitter) for setting this up for me. Links to the LiveMeetings are listed below for the two sessions I’ll be doing:

UPDATE: Ok Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) has brought to my attention that internet at the event might be spotty at best so this live event may or may not happen. Follow me on Twitter for updates as they happen…

Policy Based Management 101 (10:15 am-11:15 am EST) – LiveMeeting Link

Twitter and SQL Server:A Perfect UNION (1:15-1:30 pm EST) – LiveMeeting Link

I’m going to try and have the sessions recorded, let’s see how it goes!

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Good afternoon students, this is just a quick announcement to let you know that SQL University (sort of) is offering a computer lab for students to cut their teeth on SQL 2008 technology. I say sort of because this lab is actually offered via a partnership with PASS, Maximum ASP, and DELL Computers at http://www.sqlserverbeta.com .

The labs offer up a virtual sandbox environment where you can discover and practice everything you learn here in a dedicated hosted environment! Here’s the lab description:

We will be adding additional labs in the coming months in preparation for the release of SQL Server 2008 R2, so check back often.

So how do you get in on this great deal? Well just head on over to http://www.sqlserverbeta.com and Register!

As if next week couldn’t get any better, Andy Warren went and jacked up the awesome factor. Details of the contest are below but HURRY! The contest ends tomorrow (Sunday) at 5pm.

THE MAIN PRIZE: Free attendance at any of the seminars next week, a $149 value!

THE CONSOLATION PRIZE: We’ve got three runner up prizes, a super discounted price of $99 for any seminar next week.

THE CONTEST: Correctly answer all three of the following questions:

1. Which speaker ‘spins’ a good story?
2. Which session seems to be the most fishy?
3. Which speaker (hint: could be multiple answers) is speaking at a SQLSaturday for the first time?

HOW TO SUBMIT: Email your answers to sqlsaturday21@sqlsaturday.com with a subject of ‘Seminar Contest’. Entries must be received by 5 pm on Sunday and will be announced later Sunday evening – along with one more exciting contest!

Good luck! 

SQLSaturday #21 is gonna be HUUUUUUGE!

I’m excited about next weekend’s SQLSaturday as its going to be one HUGE event. If you live anywhere in the Southeastern United States you should be excited as well! Why? Well for starters next is, for all intents and purposes this is going to be like PASS Summit: East Coast Edition.

For starters, the week leading up to SQL Saturday will feature some top-notch seminars. Each seminar is $149 and includes full-day training as well as lunch. Here’s the seminar schedule for the week:

Monday: Essentials of Managing SQL Server by Andy Warren (Blog | LinkedIn)

Tuesday: Learn BI in a Day by Brian Knight (Blog | Twitter)

Wednesday: Real World Performance Tuning by Kevin Kline (Blog | Twitter)

Thursday: From Zero to SSIS by Andy Leonard (Blog | Twitter)

Friday: Performance Tuning Methodology by Buck Woody (Blog | Twitter)

In addition use code “KKLINE” to get a 20% discount if you register for two or more seminars! Even better if you sign up for the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday sessions together you can knock $200 off the price by using the discount code ”Bundle” at checkout. Also worth noting is that Kevin Kline will be visiting various user groups around the state next week. Here’s the schedule:

And that’s just the week leading up to the main event!!!EXCLAMATIONPOINT

On Saturday we have a plethora of great speakers and sessions. In addition to all the guys I’ve previously mentioned in this post we also have guys like Chad Miller (Blog | Twitter), Joe Celko (Blog), Joe Webb (Blog | Twitter), Kendal Van Dyke (Blog | Twitter), Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter), Ken Simmons (Blog | Twitter) and more presenting! This SQLSaturday is also seeing the introduction of the mini-sessions. Mini-sessions are 15-minute presentations aimed at first-time speakers to encourage them to present at a big event without the pressure of having to fill that hour time slot.

So what are you waiting for? Oh what you want one more thing to entice you? Ok, how about free T-shirts for the first 150 to arrive to the event? Swag? We got it in spades. We only have a few seats left so hurry up and register!