Category: PASS

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PASS Presentation SQL Server Syndicated Syndication user group

Policy Based Management with SQL 2008

A few weeks back I presented at the Tampa SSUG meeting on Policy Based Management with SQL 2008. Unfortunately due to sickness and apparently my own laziness, I never got around to doing a follow-up post or posting my slide deck. First the slide deck:

Powerpoint 2007 version

Powerpoint 97-2003 version

As a warning the deck itself is a bit sparse with how-to info as the meat of my presentation is in demo format. Given that fact, I will start a series of blog posts covering Policy Based Management and how/what you can do with it. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for those! In the meantime a big thank you for everyone that attended the Tampa presentation, hopefully I’ll be giving this same presentation again at SQL Saturday South Florida in August.

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PASS Presentation Syndicated Syndication user group

Tampa SQL Server User Group Meeting 6/16: I’m Presenting!

Just wanted to post that tomorrow night I’ll be presenting on Policy Based Management in SQL 2008 at the Tampa SQL Server User Group meeting. The details of the meeting are below, hope to see you there!

Date:
6/16/2009

Topic:
Policy Based Management

Speakers:
Jorge Segarra


Location:
Franklin Templeton Buidling ( Directions )

Map picture


Description:

Jorge Segarra will be presenting Policy Based Management. We will be learning an overview of this powerful new feature in SQL 2008 and how you can leverage it to help manage your existing SQL environment. This will include plenty of demos, best practices and Q&A so by the end you should be able to walk away ready to take control of your SQL Servers!

Jorge has been a SQL DBA for over 5 years with experience with SQL 2000, 2005 and 2008. Some of his other specialties include virtualization, specifically on the VMware platform. He is currently the Database Administrator for University Community Hospital (www.universitycommunityhospital.org) in Tampa. Check out his blog at: http://sqlchicken.blogspot.com.

Food and drinks will be provided by Jane Powell of CIBER, Inc. CIBER is a pure-play international system integration consultancy and outsourcing company with superior value-priced services and reliable delivery for both private and government sector clients. CIBER’s services are offered globally on an outsourced, project, or staffing basis, in both custom and ERP package environments, and across all technology platforms, operating systems and infrastructures.

As usual, SWAG from the group’s stash will be raffled. SWAG will include Office 2007, books and other items.

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PASS Review Syndicated Syndication user group

Tampa SQL BI User Group – Designing Slowly Changing Dimensions

So Monday night was the monthly SQL BI user group meeting. Attending these meetings is always interesting for me since I’m not a BI-guy (leave out the gutter jokes please…) so I definitely learn something new. I also leave with a raging headache since I have trouble wrapping my head around some of this crazy stuff. I tip my hat off to you guys that specialize on the BI side of SQL Server. I’ve come to realize that its kind of like Texas Hold ‘Em poker vs Omaha. When it comes to SQL we’re all playing the same game with very different rules. Anyhow, I digress, back to the recap.

We started off with a general “what’s going on” discussion in the world of tech/SQL/etc. We talked about some of the big stuff that happened that day such as Microsoft’s numerous announcements during their E3 presentation, the public launch of Microsoft’s new search engine: Bing, the current state of job market (looking better, contact Stever Turner as he has quite a few SQL jobs available), Microsoft’s Second Shot offer (expires at the end of this month), next month’s SQL User Group meeting (I’ll be presenting on Policy Based Management), and the announcements regarding SQL Server 2008 R2 and “Gemini”, which turned out to be a very hot topic for the night! For the record our group is looking for more info and demos on Gemini so if you’re available for a talk and want to visit sunny Tampa drop Rob Hatton a line!

Speaking of Rob, he was our featured presenter this month on the topic of Designing Slowly Changing Dimensions. The discussion was based around the Kimball Methodology which if you’re not familiar with then you are highly encouraged to go grab a copy of The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball. On the whole I found the presentation really good but after awhile some of the concepts start flying over my head.Some things I did walk with is that when you’re doing a data warehouse project some things you need to realize is that 80% of your effort will go towards the ETL, 5-10% to the cube and the remaining to the relational stuff. Another little tidbit I picked up is that apparently 3/4 of the source data that the BI pros in the room have dealt with to load into the staging portion of the DW are CSV/txt files which surprised me. Then again I’m a DBA so I believe everything should live in nice relational databases! I don’t mean to skimp on the details of the presentation mostly because I wouldn’t do it justice and I’d probably be wrong about the details. Rob’s slide deck should be available on the user group’s website soon and when it is I’ll link it here.

As an added bonus, and due to our lengthy discussion and excitement about SQL 2008 R2 and “Project Gemini”, Robert Skoglund from Microsoft, managed to show us a quick 6 minute video clip from Donald Farmer’s presentation on Gemini. Unfortunately it was without audio so we couldn’t get detailed explanations of the features. If you’re curious about Gemini check out this link from Donald Farmer’s blog that has everything you need to know.

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PASS SQL Server Syndicated Syndication user group

Tampa Bay SQL Server BI User Group Meeting Tonight!

Just an FYI tonight is the monthly Tampa Bay SQL Server BI User Group meeting. Tonight’s presentation will be by our fearless leader Rob Hatton on Creating Slowly Changing Dimensions.

The meeting will begin at 6:30 PM in the new Microsoft Office at:

5426 Bay Center Drive
Suite 700
Tampa, FL 33609

Map picture

Our sponsor this month is Steve Turner (Twitter) of T2 Software Services.

T2 Software Services offers a wide range of people services to its Clients through:

·Consulting Services – IT Supplemental Staffing (Staff Augmentation)

·Project Outsourcing – With full Project Management & Responsibility

·Placement Services – Direct Placement (Contingency Search)

As per my new modus operandi, I will give a follow up post on the meeting in the next couple of days. See you there!

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PASS Review SIG SQL Server Syndicated Syndication

PASS DBA SIG: Understanding the Default Trace

Today during lunch was the monthly PASS webcast for the Database Administration SIG. This month’s topic was understanding the default trace and was presented by Jonathan Kehayias (BLOG Twitter). Jonathan did a great job as he very clearly explained the nuances of the default trace (i.e. what it really is, how you query it, what’s it do, etc.).

The presentation files are available at his blog. If you get a chance definitely check out the on-demand replay which should be available next week. On a side note this is my second or third one of these I’ve attended and I absolutely love it! I think PASS is doing a great job providing this sort of on-going training for the community and I also tip my hat to people like Jonathan who are willing to take time out of their day to present.