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400
DBA
Simon Sabin
I've spent over 10 years tuning SQL databases and I'm still learning new ways to tune my database.
In this session we will look at how we can analyse queries and understand how they should perform, how they do perform and most importantly will your application scale when you get more than you and a tester using your application.
Query tuning comes down understanding resource usage. We will look at,
- How to use Profiler
- Understanding Query plans
- Key monitors in System Monitor
- Identifying Resource usage
- How SQL Server uses resources internally
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400
Kat
R Meyyappan
Best Practice Guidelines for optimal performance while using the new SQL Server 2008 features: Filtered Index/Statistics, Resource Governor, Row Compression , Page Compression, Server Configuration Option: 'optimize for ad hoc workloads', Plan Freezing, Table-Valued Parameters, Disabling Table Lock Escalation, Transparent Data Encryption and more.
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300
Dev
Gojko Adzic
Part I: Technical challenges and best practices for Database TDD (30 mins)
- Why database TDD is hard
- What can we do to make it easier
- Best practices for stored procedure unit testing
- Best practices for Java/.NET integration tests that involve a database
Part II: DbFit technical demo (20 mins)
- Why DbFit succeeded where x-Unit style tools have failed
- Effectively testing stored procedures
- managing relational data during a test
- Using DbFit to prepare data or verify the test results for Java/.NET integration tests
- Covering legacy code with tests
Q&A (10 mins)
This talk was previously presented at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.
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300
DBA
Brad McGehee
Many DBAs take routine database maintenance for granted. What they don’t understand is that the cumulative effect of poor database maintenance can significantly hurt performance. In this session, you will learn the key things all DBAs need to know in order to maintain their databases at peak performance, including:
- Physical File Defragmentation
- Database and Log File Management
- tempdb Maintenance
- msdb Maintenance
- Index Maintenance
- Statistics Maintenance
- Data Corruption Detection
- Database and Log File Protection
- Database Maintenance Monitoring
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300
DBA
Christian Bolton
In this session I will be bringing together all the components of SQL Server to illustrate what happens when you issue a query from a client. From the TDS packet, through ODS, the optimizer and the buffer manager to returning the result. I'll walk you through when the transaction log is used, what happens when a checkpoint occurs and what the lazy writer does.I've illustrated the process in a way that's easy to consume and helpful to put SQL Server's architecture into context.
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200
DBA
Andre Kamman
I've been in more than one situation where I was asked to tune a system where they had thrown a years salary in hardware at the problem already. Only to find out that the app would run just 3% faster or even 10% slower !
I'll bring some examples and will show you what I did and why. This is not just for DBA's, DEV's should also get at least one usefull thing out of this session.
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300
BI
Vincent Rainardi
In this session we will discuss what is dimensional data model, why do we use it for data warehousing, when to use and when not to use, what are the advantages and disadvantages and what are the alternatives. We will put dimensional modelling into practice by designing a data mart using a case study. That way we can get first hand experience about how a 3rd normal form transactional database is translated into fact and dimension tables in a dimensional model. Time permitting, we will also discuss some particular points in dimensional modelling such as smart date key, choosing dimensional grain, and real time fact table.
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300
BI
Davide Mauri
Have you ever been struck by the lack of detailed logging available within SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages?
If the answer to this question is yes, then you are probably a seasoned Business Intelligence solutions builder. The packages that make up your solutions probably contain extra code to facilitate effective monitoring, control and profileing. However, increasingly, SSIS is being used to unify data found on disparate yet related transactional systems. The batch processes that perform this activity thus become a vital part of the information processing ecosystem. These need to be monitored and profiled in the same way as formal BI solutions but often the resources available are much more meager. What do you do when something goes wrong and the functionality of the packages is not transparent via internal state reporting.
This session will introduce you to an improved version of DTExec. By passing the appropriate state flags it can reveal the internal activity of packages without having to make any changes to the packages themselves.
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300
BI
Jamie Thomson
Over the past 4 years I have been producing a series of blog posts that I have colloquially called "SSIS Nuggets" which provide tips and tricks that may help when using SSIS.
In this presentation I will be bringing some of those nuggets to life through the medium of demonstration!
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300
Kat
James Rowland-Jones
Features to be covered include:
- Resource Governer
- Compression
- STAR Joins
- Parallelism Improvements
- Minimally Logged Inserts
- Read Committed Snapshot Isolation Enhancements
- SSIS Improvements
- Anything else that springs to mind...:o)
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200
Dev
Mike Taulty
In this session we'll explore ADO.NET Data Services ( formerly "Astoria" ) that shipped in .NET Framework V3.5 Service Pack 1.
We'll take a look at what the framework does for us in exposing data as XML or JSON payloads over HTTP and offering CRUD access based on HTTP verbs of GET,POST,PUT,DELETE. We'll look at how we can serialize any custom data that we like and also how this framework ties in with the recently released Entity Framework (LINQ to Entities) and LINQ to SQL frameworks.
We'll explore the options for plugging in our own custom code into the services that ADO.NET Data Services generates for us.
If time permits, we'll take a look at how we can use client libraries to build both .NET clients and AJAX clients for the services that "Astoria" lets us build and we might even find some time for some serious arm-waving about the commonality between these services and other offerings that we see in areas like the Windows Azure Services platform.
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400
Dev
Klaus Aschenbrenner
Service Broker provides several new key features for building SOA applications directly with SQL Server 2005. This "No slides – just code" session shows you, in just 75 minutes, how to build an SOA-based, secure, reliable, and distributed messaging application with SQL Server 2008 Service Broker from scratch. We’ll cover:
· The core architectural concepts behind Service Broker
· How you can do SOA with Service Broker – a practical approach
· Advanced Topics – from the field
o Routing between several SQL Server instances
o Implementing reliable messaging
o Securing a Service Broker conversation between you and your trading partners
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300
Dev
Hue Holleran
SSMS is a great environment ... and here's how to make it even better: write your own AddIn! I'm sure that you have scripts that you run on a regular basis, you may even have external tools that run a set of operations on a SQL database - but it's not "integrated".
This session shows you how to do the really impressive things with SSMS that you may have seen in other products: direct integration with SSMS. Want to right-click on a database or a table and see your own menu and options come-up? Come along and see it - I guarantee you'll be impressed.
Even if you have no immediate requirement - this session will provide an interesting insight into how others have integrated with SSMS - and just how easy it really is - with the correct steps - all will be detailed before your very eyes!
This session shows you how to build an AddIn from "zero to hero" - maybe you'll be your company's next hero by providing a truly indispensible option tailored your company or department's specific requirements - saving literally man days of work for your team for common operations in your environment?
This session shows how to go from initial creation to fully packaged install in one session - everything you need to build your own AddIn for SSMS 2005, 2008 and Express. You can then take this knowledge and apply it to your own environment - I guarantee you'll have lots of ideas before you even leave the session!
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200
Kat
Martin Bell
SQL Server 2008 has plenty of new, improved and updated features including extensions to Transact SQL. In this presentation Martin will demonstrate some of the new T-SQL features including:
- Row Constructors
- Merge
- Hierarchy Id Data Type
- Sparse Column and Column Sets
- Grouping Sets
- Filestream Storage
- User Defined Table Type
- Table Valued Parameters
- Date and Time Functionality
- Dependency Reporting
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400
BI
Tomislav Piasevoli
Among many of its functions, MDX language has one special set function - Axis() function. That function allows creation of calculated measures that are fully context aware and, if wanted, don't need to refer to any dimension or hierarchy in the cube. In other words, such measures are universal or independant, which means they can be used in any MDX query.
In this session we will present such measures and explain how they work. We'll also show the way how to design them for various scenarios and discuss their potentials and weaknesses.
Previous experience in writing MDX queries is recommended.
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300
Dev
Peter Doyle
SSIS development can be a frustrating experience. However it is becoming an increasingly important part of the SQL Server tool set and an important skill for the professional SQL server developer. The best way to learn SSIS is to see a real world example being built from scratch. The brief is to import a collection of delimited files into sql server, date stamp and archive the files, capture any errors and get the data into a SQL server table. It sounds straight forward but what if the file contains embedded quotes for example ("ABC","DEF",""Hello world, again""). Try importing this line using SSIS! You have to be able to adapt when using SSIS and this session will give you some ideas for getting round SSIS limitations and getting the job done.
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200
Dev
Ashwani Roy
There are many times when a developer realises that this snippet is not performing the way it was expected to . This happens as early as dev or unit testing cycle . This is the best time to get hold of those performance bottlenecks by using the most accessible performance tuning option "The Graphical Execution Plan".
It is a one click operation to get to the plan but the terms like Seek, scan , Book mark Lookup , RID lookup and many more soon start puzzling the developer.
This session is aimed at making the developer aware of those terms and using this knowledge decipher the plan.
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300
Dev
Richard Fennell
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals has been with us for a couple of years now. The new GDR release has some significant changes from the previous versions. In this session I will look at how VSTS for the first time makes the database developer a first class citizen in the Microsoft development family, particulary highlighting the new features in the GDR release.
I aim to cover the complete development life cycle using this tool, addressing issues such as schema management, source control, testing, data generation and deployment.
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200
Dev
Ben Hall
You maybe have heard about Linq to SQL, you may have heard about the Entity Framework but there is an open source framework getting a lot more attention called NHibernate. NHibernate is a port of the Java framework Hibernate and is an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework allowing you to persistence POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects) to and from a relational database such as SQL Server. In this session, Ben will provide an introduction into the NHibernate 2.0 framework and how it can be used to query your database. Ben will cover how you can use the Hibernate Query Language (HQL) and the Criteria query API to return the required data from your database, before looking at real world issues around transactions and caching. Finally, Ben will demonstrate how you can use NHibernate with other database providers, such as SQLite and Oracle.
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200
Kat
Chris Testa-O'Neill
With Reporting Services 2008, Microsoft takes a step forward in presenting SQL Server as an enterprise data platform. Innovations in data regions, vast improvements in visualisation, and a new Report Designer, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services provides a tool that can be used by all members in the organization.
This session will begin on Installation issues.You will walk through the authoring, management and delivery of reports, focusing on the new features of Reporting Services 2008, creating a report in the new report designer. Raising awareness of Report management options and the delivery mechanisms to deliver reports.
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200
Dev
Simon Munro
Windows Azure offers table, blob and queue storage for data in the cloud. SQL Data Services also offer a mechansim to store data in the cloud. Both are completely different from what we are used in SQL Server or ASP.NET. This session discusses and demonstrates the different cloud storage options and how they would be used within different scenarios.
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200
Kat
Chris Webb
Building aggregations is one of the most important ways of improving query performance in Analysis Services, but simply running the Aggregation Design Wizard doesn't always result in useful aggregations being built. This session shows the steps you need to go through in order to build aggregations that are actually going to be used by the queries that you're running.
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200
BI
Allan Mitchell
Being able to analyse your data with a predictive technology such as MS SQL Server 2008 data mining can open up new views on your data. Being able to understand whether a customer will react to a campaign or know whether you have the right level of staff on at the roght times in your help desk could be a real winner for your business. Come to my session and we will put the two technologies together and hopefully you will discover something new to do with SSIS.
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300
DBA
Ross Mistry
SQL Server is regularly targeted by hackers as it is a repository of sensitive data for organizations. If breached, hackers can gain access to confidential information including, but not limited to credit card numbers, social security numbers, and marketing information. This presentation covers topics pertaining to best practices and tips on how to secure and harden a SQL Server 2008 & 2005 implementation. Some of the security and hardening topics covered include: minimize surface area with policy based management, encryption, advanced auditing, configuring a Windows Server 2008 firewall, applying security templates with Active Directory, and consolidating SQL Server logs.
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300
DBA
Dr András Belokosztolszki
What does it mean that my index is fragmented? Why do I get a warning about index record sizes? How should I store images in SQL Server? Knowing how SQL Server stores data and what options there are to control this can help you to build more efficient applications. In this session we will look at how table and index data is stored on disk. We will look at the various data types available, from bits to filestreams, how indexes can be used to optimize read or write performance, and how row and page compression work.
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300
Kat
Justin Langford
There are a growing number of availability solutions to choose between and knowing which technology to deploy based on requirements can be a difficult choice.
This session will provide an overview of the technologies available, comparing and contrasting these and discussing common combinations of complementary technologies.
Here's a summary of the session:
- The availability problem
- How to compare alternatives
- Solutions to improve database availability
- Failover clustering
- Database mirroring
- Log shipping
- Replication
- Combining High Availability technologies
- Geo-clusters and storage replication
- Other technologies to improve database availability
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300
DBA
Satya Jayanty
In this session we will cover SQL Server Upgrade options, methodology, tools and planning, technical and non-technical considerations along with common issues, myths and mistakes.
Also coverage towards the exhaustive list of all upgrade issues with an end-to-end coverage or in-depth drilldown of all SQL Server 2005 & 2008 features.
A pre-requisite from the attendee is operational familiarity with SQL Server 2000/2005 along with basic knowledge of SQL Server 2008.
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300
DBA
Tom Pullen
High availability is becoming an ever-more pressing business need. Of all the technologies available to you, clustering is the slickest and easiest, but probably the trickiest in terms of setup. This session will take you through creating a clustered SQL Server. This will cover planning, prerequisities, security, installation, troubleshooting, configuring and supporting. It will focus on SQL Server 2005 but will include whats-new information for 2008 as well.
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