22-25 April 2026 
Database Design Throwdown
2017TL; DR
Data architects and DBAs have debated database design best practices for decades. Join us for some great debates and laughs.
Session Details
Everyone agrees that great database performance starts with a great database design. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees which design options are best. Data architects and DBAs have debated database design best practices for decades. Systems built to handle current workloads are unable to maintain performance as workloads increase.
Attend this engaging and sometimes irreverent session about the pros and cons of database design decisions. This debate includes topics such as logical design, NULLS, surrogate keys, GUIDs, primary keys, indexes, refactoring, code-first generators, and even the cloud. Learn about the contentious issues that most affect your end users and how to deal with them.
Prerequisites: Opinions, lots of them, even wrong ones.
Attend this engaging and sometimes irreverent session about the pros and cons of database design decisions. This debate includes topics such as logical design, NULLS, surrogate keys, GUIDs, primary keys, indexes, refactoring, code-first generators, and even the cloud. Learn about the contentious issues that most affect your end users and how to deal with them.
Prerequisites: Opinions, lots of them, even wrong ones.
3 things you'll get out of this session
Speakers
Karen Lopez's previous sessions
Graphs Are Everywhere - Graph DB Support in SQL vNext
Learn about graph databases and how they are implemented in SQL Server vNext
7 Databases in 70 Minutes
Learn about 7 SQL and NoSQL databases: how they work, when to use them, and how they form a modern data architecture
5+ Database Design Blunders and How to Avoid Them
Karen discusses five (plus a few more) database design blunders with tips on how to avoid them. Audience members will also be able to contribute their war stories of design fails, WTHs and D'ohs.
Thomas LaRock
thomaslarock.com
Thomas LaRock's previous sessions
From Here to Azure
Attend this interactive session and learn how to create, deploy, and migrate data from your on-premises instance of SQL Server to Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines and Microsoft Azure SQL Database.
Database Design: Size DOES Matter
Great database performance starts with great database design.
Cardinality Estimates in Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Attend this session and understand how, why, and when SQL Server uses statistics and how this new feature will help improve performance.
Monitoring Databases in a Virtual Environment
This session will help DBAs to understand what changes they need to make in their performance and monitoring practices for virtualized database servers.
Database Design: Size Does Matter!
Great database performance starts with great database design. During the design process it is important to select your SQL Server datatypes wisely. Failure to do so will result in wasted disk space, additional I/O overhead, and decreased performance.