The SQL UPDATE Statement

I can’t believe it, but I can finally say that I’m now officially a Microsoft SQL Server MVP! Last week I got the great news from my MVP lead, Ryan Bolz (Twitter) in…a peculiar way. Allow me to explain. Typically MVP renewals and new awardees are notified four times a year, once every quarter. This past quarter’s notifications went out on July 1st. Like so many in the community, when the quarterly MVP day rolled around I was guilty of refreshing my inbox every 5 minutes for 24 hours hoping for that magic Wonka ticket into MVP-ville.

Felt a little something like this...

Alas, July 1st came and went with no email. Disappointed turtle was disappointed. Now I say I was disappointed since I knew I’d been nominated the last few quarters but hadn’t heard anything yet. And yes, I know “it’s the award you’re not supposed to want”, but still it’s stressful knowing you’re up for it but not hearing anything one way or the other. This time around I figured “oh well, keep it up and eventually…maybe”. Anywho, last week as I was at the JSSUG meeting when I got a DM from Ryan with the following: “Hi Jorge — Congratulations! You are a MVP. Call me so I can explain it all to you.”

Say WHAT?!? I checked and double checked the message to make sure it wasn’t some sort of sick prank. As soon as I got out of the meeting I gave Ryan a call to find out what was going on. I’d heard of folks getting awarded out of cycle before but I was still thoroughly confused as to what was going on! As it turns out, apparently I HAD been awarded MVP status in the July 1st batch but something went wrong with getting me the notification. For those not familiar with the process, Microsoft sends out the MVP emails en-masse to folks which seems to trip every spam filter around. Since this is the case, folks are told to check their spam folders on MVP day just in case. In my peculiar case it wasn’t a matter of spam filter black hole but rather an error in my contact information. Near as I can tell they had an invalid email address on file for me so they weren’t able to send me my notification!

Fast forward a few weeks and Ryan had gone on vacation and gotten sick during that period, when he finally got back to the office and catching up he somehow discovered that I had no idea I was awarded. That’s when he dug around and sent me a DM on Twitter as that was a guaranteed means of getting to me directly.

The Mushy Part

Story aside, I want to let you all know how truly grateful I am for this honor. It’s been a pleasure and privilege being a part of this amazing SQL community and this award just compels me to keep working even harder to deserve it. I want to thank everyone for the warm congrats and support, it means a LOT! I’d also like to send a special thank you to those who nominated me and sent me words of encouragement every quarter.

Speaking of working harder I got another piece of amazing news last week as well: I’ll be presenting for the first time at PASS Summit this year! What makes THAT even cooler is that the session is a Community Spotlight session, meaning you guys were gracious enough to cast your vote for me so I can bore educate the masses on Policy-Based Management at the Super Bowl/World Cup of SQL Server events! That being said thank you all so SO much for all your love and support and I look forward to continue serving this community for years to come!

Just wanted to post a quick note/invitation to everyone to come join us on Thursday, May 12th from 5:45-7:00 for the SQLRally Overdrive: Birds of a Feather Discussions event.

We’ll have several tables, each with a dedicated expert in the field hosting conversations. Want to delve into some shop talk about PowerShell? Curious about how Analysis Services are being setup by other folks in the field? Care to swap architecture design ideas about SSIS with others? Well this is the place to do this and more! Here’s the list of folks who have graciously volunteered to host tables at this event:

Mike Davis (Blog | Twitter) – SSRS

Grant Fritchey (Blog | Twitter) – Indexing/Performance Tuning

Adam Jorgensen (Blog | Twitter)- SSAS

Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter) – SSIS

Andie Letourneau (Blog | Twitter) – Women in Technology

Brian Moran (Blog | Twitter)- Professional Development

Jorge Segarra (Blog | Twitter) – Administration

Ed Wilson (Blog | Twitter) – PowerShell

So you’re going to SQLRally in Orlando next week? Want to take advantage of ALL of the awesome opportunities presented? In addition to all of the amazing training content you’ll see at the event itself, we’re holding some great stuff after-hours on Thursday. We’re calling this SQLRally OverDrive!

These are three different panel events being hosted by members of the SQL community. You have your choice of three cool events to choose from:

Do you have a data warehouse initiative in your current organization and looking for a way to learn how to properly build and support it? Would you like to learn how to do this straight from the Masters of the BIverse themselves? Well you’re in luck! Next month at SQLRally there’s going to be a great pre-conference session held by the following:

Mike Davis (Blog | Twitter)

Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter)

Adam Jorgensen (Blog | Twitter)

Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter)

In this full-day workshop, you’ll learn from the author team of Mike Davis, Adam Jorgensen, Devin Knight, and Patrick LeBlanc how to build a data warehouse for your company and support it with the Microsoft business intelligence platform. We’ll start with how to design and data model a data warehouse including the system preparation. Then, we’ll jump into loading a data warehouse with SSIS. After SSIS, you’re ready to roll the data up and provide the slice and dice reporting with SSAS. The team will walk through cube development and data enrichment with things like key performance indicators, which are essential for your future dashboards.  Lastly, we will cover how to report against the data warehouse with SSRS, including a primer in how to write MDX queries against the SSAS cube.

What you can expect to take away from this session:

1. Practical knowledge of building a Dimensional Model
2. Designing a simple ETL process using SSIS
3. Designing a Cube
4. Designing simple SSRS Reports
5. Building an integrated process that fully leverages the entire MS BI stack to load a Data Warehouse.

You can register here and pre-con fee is $199 (which includes lunch). This is a great deal so what are you waiting for? Sign up today as slots are filling up fast! See you at SQLRally!

Yesterday was the first day of PASS’ 24 Hours of PASS event. For those not familiar, 24 Hours of PASS is an event that brings together 24 different presenters and they present on various topics on SQL Server ranging from performance tuning, internals to business intelligence and previews at vNext of SQL Server. This month’s event is quite special since March is Women’s History Month, PASS is celebrating it by having this event all delivered by women!

So far the event has been absolutely awesome and the awesomeness continues today with the last 12 hours of the event, starting at 8am EST. If you missed yesterday, don’t fret, all of the sessions are being recorded and will be available on the PASS website within a month. Yesterday’s sessions went well, we had some sessions that actually had over 750 attendees (or as Tom LaRock refers to it as, the Jetliner line)! There were a few surprises as well, such as in Isabel de la Barra’s session, where we were treated to a presentation in Spanish (and translated by moderator Jesus Gil). At first we thought it was going to be a big issue but it turns out that over 300 attendees stuck around for the session and feedback from the Twitter stream seemed positive.

Speaking of Twitter, if you wish to follow along with the event you can do so by following the event hash tag of #24HOP. We are also using #sqlpass as well as #passwit to help promote and discuss the event. Day one is in the book and day two is looking to be fantastic as well, see you in the sessions!