PASSMN April 2013 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is tomorrow Tuesday, April 16. This month the two presentations will be on (1) HortonWorks sandbox demo and (2) NoSQL.  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Robert Half Technology.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SRR9DN&role=attend&pw=zd%3F9c.2KJ
• Meeting ID: SRR9DN
• Entry Code: zd?9c.2KJ

Agenda:

• 4:00-4:15 : Announcements / Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:15-4:30 : HortonWorks Sandbox Demo, by Bill Preachuk
• 4:30-5:45 : Rules of Engagement: NoSQL is SQL Server’s Ally, by Rick Krueger and Dave Valentine
• 5:45-6:00 : Prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Presentations

HortonWorks Sandbox Demo (by Bill Preachuk, Emergent Networks)

HortonWorks provides a free downloadable Virtual Machine image that promises you “Go from Zero to BIG DATA in 15 minutes!“ In this short presentation we’ll discuss What the Sandbox is, Where to get it, How to install it, and How to get it up & running. Then we’ll fire up our trusty rusty VMware environment, step through the web-based GUI and run a few of the included tutorials.

Bill Preachuk serves on the Board of the PASSMN User Group and is responsible for SQL Saturday Minnesota 2013. He is a SQL Server 2008 MCTS, and is employed as a DBA/Data Warehouse Designer at Emergent Networks. Bill has been in IT since 1991 and has presented at Analytics conferences, PASS User Group meetings and SQL Saturday events in the Twin Cities and Iowa.

Rules of Engagement: NoSQL is SQL Server’s Ally (by Rick Krueger and Dave Valentine)

When should you favor a NoSQL store over SQL Server, or consider polyglot persistence? In military and police operations, the rules of engagement determine when, where, and how force shall be used. As the “data police”, we are responsible for determining when, where, and how data is stored. As SQL Server professionals, it tends to be our first choice, even when there are other data storage options that are a ‘more natural’ fit. In this session, Rick and Dave will start with the NoSQL basics, and then dive into the different categories of NoSQL stores while explaining what each type is well suited for.

Rick Krueger is the President of Premier Applications, Inc., and a SQL Server indie based in the Twin Cities with 18 years of software and database development experience, working with SQL Server since 1998 (6.5). Don’t let his developer credentials (MCPD) and background fool you, he knows a thing or two about SQL, and is currently focusing on data architecture and database development.

Dave Valentine is a Development DBA with over 10 years of experience with SQL Server and Development technologies, specializing in Business Intelligence and ingenious solutions. Dave has also been an Adjunct Professor at Metropolitan State University for the past 10 years educating students in Database Management, Web Development, and Java Programming.

PASSMN February 2013 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is next Tuesday on February 19.  This month the two presentations will be on (1) rules-based backup and index maintenance and (2) database corruption.  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Emergent Networks.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, February 19 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Live Meeting:
• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SRR9DN&role=attend&pw=zd%3F9c.2KJ
• Meeting ID: SRR9DN
• Entry Code: zd?9c.2KJ

Agenda

• 4:00 – 4:10 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:15 – 5:15 : Presentation: Shoveling Frogs into a Wheelbarrow
• 5:15 – 5:45 : Presentation: An Overview of Database Corruption
• 5:45 – 6:00 : Announcements and prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Presentations

Shoveling Frogs into a Wheelbarrow (by Merrill Aldrich)

If you face managing over a hundred, or perhaps thousands of databases, automation, standards and a “policy-based” mindset are critical. In this session we’ll do a walk-through of a rules-based backup and index maintenance solution suitable for zillions of smaller databases, and talk at a high level about features and techniques for multi-server management including monitoring, performance data collection, jobs automation, PowerShell and PBM. (The core of it will be a walkthrough of the solution athttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/merrill_aldrich/archive/2012/08/01/rules-driven-maintenance.aspx and the update published athttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/merrill_aldrich/archive/2013/01/16/update-to-rules-driven-maintenance.aspx)

Merrill Aldrich is a SQL Server DBA with one of the largest credit unions in the US, located in the Seattle area. He’s currently responsible for corralling a sprawling and very diverse collection of ISV-provided SQL Server databases that together serve the organization’s 800,000 members. In a past life he was trained in Architecture, designed buildings, and taught three-dimensional modeling and building information modeling.

Blog: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/merrill_aldrich/default.aspx

Twitter: @onupdatecascade

An Overview of Database Corruption (by James Larson, United Health Group)

An Overview of Database Corruption that will include warning signs, causes and scenarios with repair options

James Larson is a Database Consultant\ Team Lead at United Health Group. Has over 15 years of experience with SQL Server. James also has 4 years of experience developing applications with Visual Basic 6.0. James has been working in the Health Care field for over 8 years and currently holds a Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance Certification.

PASSMN Special December 2012 Meeting

Next week the Minnesota SQL Server User Group is having a special meeting on Wednesday, December 5.  The presentation will be on Big Data.  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this special meeting is Microsoft Technology Communities.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Wednesday, December 5 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.

Agenda

• 5:30 – 5:45 : Registration / hospitality / networking / food!
• 5:45 – 6:45 : Hadoop’s Role in a Big Data Architecture
• 6:45 – 7:00 : Announcements / Networking

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Presentations

Jim Walker talks Hadoop, Big Data and Microsoft Tools

Jim Walker, Hortonworks, is a recovering developer, professional marketer and amateur photographer with nearly twenty years experience building products and developing emerging technologies. During his career, he has brought multiple products to market in a variety of fields, including data loss prevention, master data management and now big data. At Hortonworks, Jim is focused on accelerating the development and adoption of Apache Hadoop.

And don’t forget, the SQL Lunch that was scheduled for October was rescheduled and will be next month for Friday, December 14 from 11:30 to 1:30 with me as the host – SQLFriends Lunch–Dec 14.

PASSMN November 2012 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is next Tuesday on November 20.  This month the presentation will be on SQL Server database locking and blocking.  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.
 
The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Dell Compellent.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, November 20 from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

Live Meeting:
• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=8DFJJB&role=attend&pw=Z-%3B%7D*t4%2Cn
• Meeting ID: 8DFJJB
• Entry Code: Z-;}*t4,n

Agenda

• 4:00 – 4:10 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:10 – 4:15 : From our Sponsor – Overview of Dell Compellent SAN
• 4:15 – 5:15 : Introduction to SQL Server Locking and Blocking
• 5:15 – 5:30 : Announcements and prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event 

Presentations

Introduction to SQL Server Locking and Blocking (Kirby Richter, Dell Compellent)

What is locking?  What is blocking?  Why should you care?  You want to update a million rows on production, you need to know what type of locks will happen so you can plan accordingly!

You are tuning a query and the normal duration is 1 second but recently it’s been taking over a minute.  Is your process being blocked?

Let’s face it blocking is very common and as a good DBA you need to recognize when blocking is an issue and how to deal with it.  This presentation will cover most of the gory details and includes several fun demos.  You will learn how to check and monitor locking and blocking and how to deal with common issues.

And don’t forget, the SQL Lunch that was scheduled for October was rescheduled and will be next month for Friday, December 14 from 11:30 to 1:30 with me as the host – SQLFriends Lunch–Dec 14.

PASSMN October 2012 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is next Tuesday on October 16.  This month there will be two presentations, one on a SQL database maintenance plans and the other on a new feature that was added in SQL Server 2012, Data Quality Services (DQS).  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Magenic.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, October 16 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Live Meeting:
•URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=H8JST2&role=attend&pw=rz%26R*ZSN9
•Meeting ID: H8JST2
•Entry Code: rz&R*ZSN9

Agenda

•4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
•4:15-4:45 : Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution
•4:45-5:45 : Data Quality Services
•5:45-6:00 : Announcements and prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Presentations

Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution (Rizwan Hassan, DBA at Kroll Ontrack)

DBAs are inconstantly using SQL Server standard maintenance and custom maintenance plans to maintain SQL environments. Ola Hallengren has been generous enough to contribute his maintenance plans which are not only effective, but also can be customized to meet small to large SQL environments. These plans have won SQL Server Magazine 2011 Gold Community Choice and Silver Editors’ Best awards. The Ola’s maintenance plans cover:

• SQL Server Backups
• SQL Server Integrity Checks
• SQL Server index and Statistics Maintenance

Data Quality Services (Jeff Prom, Senior Consultant at Magenic) – As the old adage goes, ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ Stop spending hours manually cleansing your data, and start using Data Quality Services! DQS is the new data quality tool provided with SQL Server 2012. In this session we will cover topics such as creating a knowledge base, data cleansing, data matching, and using 3rd party knowledge bases (Reference Data). We will talk about installation, show how to use the DQS tool, the Excel Add-in, and how to integrate DQS into your SSIS packages.

SQLFriends Lunch–Dec 14

UPDATE (10/19/2012): The date for this event has changed from Oct 19 to Dec 14. The website should be updated soon to reflect this as well.

The next SQLFriends lunch event is coming up and it will be right here in Edina, MN.  This month I will be the guest as well:)  This will take place at the Edina Grill:

From Fish & Chips to our award winning Turkey Burger, Banana Waffle and Hash Browns, you’re bound to find something you’ll love at the Edina Grill!

At the Edina Grill we serve fresh, often organic, always made from scratch fare – offering breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, morning, noon and night.

I have not had a chance to attend one of these lunch events yet, but I can only guess it will be a fun time hanging out with the SQL family.  I will be available during the lunch time to talk about topics such as consulting, Microsoft MVP program, blogging, tweeting, running a user group, organizing events, Microsoft business intelligence, SQL Server, the future of business intelligence, authoring a book, and any other off topics that you might want to discuss such as family life, coaching, water skiing, etc. 

Here are the details of the event:

Date: Friday, December 14, 2012

Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm

Location: Edina Grill, 5028 France Ave S, Edina MN, 55424

Guest: Dan English

If you are available to attend it would be great to see you and hangout, head on over and register now – SQLFriends Lunch 5 – Edina Grill with Dan English.

Special thanks to Mike Donnelly and Aaron Lowe for stepping up and organizing these great events.

MN SQL Saturday #149 Follow Up

This past weekend was the big SQL Saturday event in Minnesota and for the first time not only was the event on a Saturday, but we also had a couple of pre-con events.  I was fortunate to be able to conduct one of the pre-cons with Brian Larson.  We did an all day event on “Unlocking Insight – Be a Data Hero.”  I was a little nervous going into the pre-con because I had never done one before and wasn’t quite sure what people’s expectations would be and wanted to make sure that we had enough content.  Based on the classroom interactions I feel that the event went very well.  Brian and I covered the Microsoft BI tools, BI semantic models, PowerPivot, SharePoint, PerformancePoint, Tabular Analysis Services, and Power View.  We also provided each of the attendees a copy of our book Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View.  With all of the content, demos, and questions that were asked I think we had a very successful day (next time handing out evaluations would be a good idea).

Then came the speaker dinner at Don Pablo’s and that was a really great setup.  We had a nice patio area all to ourselves and about about 40 people must have shown up.  It was nice to catch of with some familiar faces along with people in the SQL Family that I have never met as well as some of their spouses (even some kids).  All-in-all it was a nice relaxing time and it was fun to not only talking about the work we were all doing along with discussing how our jobs were going, but also to talk about our family lives.  Such a caring and awesome community, I couldn’t ask to be around a better group of people.

Then it was time for a few hours of sleep and the big event down on the U of M campus.  This was possibly my second time on campus and it was a very nice location.  The rooms were great (at least the one I was in, didn’t get a chance to check them all out – lots of tracks and sessions, plus I had to leave early to coach a soccer game).  I had a good crowd based on all of the great sessions going on at the same time and for it being the first one in the morning.  Unfortunately I misjudged my time and the material I wanted to cover.  I should have skipped the PowerPivot and Tabular SSAS project demos and just dived into the Power View ones.  I don’t feel like I did justice to the Power View demo, so need to do a little rearranging of this presentation next time.  I did cover some of the new items coming out with SQL Server 2012 SP1 and Excel 2013 though.  Hopefully everyone got something out of the content and demos and walked away with some new information.  You can download my slides from the SQL Saturday schedule site here – Power View – Bringing your Data to Life!

I really enjoyed the nice speaker blanket, shirt, and the Quest Software swag bags as well:)

  

I want to thank everyone that was involved in organizing the event (and the volunteers), special thanks to Paul Timmerman who was leading the charge this year.  I know from past experience the time, energy, and sleepless hours that goes into doing these events.  This year I was pretty much hands off with the exception of reviewing and picking the BI sessions.  I hope that everyone had a great time and I can’t wait to do it all over again next year:)

For those that attended our pre-con or my session I will have a couple of blog postings coming up this week to cover a couple of specific items that we talked about or that I did some further research after our event.

Thanks again for those that attended and hope to catch you at one of the PASSMN user group meetings, MN Microsoft BI user group meetings (next meeting Tue, Dec 4), or one of the big events going on nationally. Until next time:)

PASSMN August 2012 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is tomorrow! This month Mark Vaillancourt (@MarkVSQL) will be talking about MDX (Multidimensional Expressions).  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Digineer.
 
Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, August 21 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Live Meeting:
•URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=W7WDDT&role=attend&pw=3%5BncxTw%28n
•Meeting ID: W7WDDT
•Entry Code: 3[ncxTw(n
 
Agenda:
•4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
•4:15-5:45 : MDX Trek: First Contact – Mark Vaillancourt 
•5:45-6:00 : Announcements and prize giveaways
 
Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

MDX Trek: First Contact – Cube space; the final frontier. In this Star Trek themed introduction to MDX, we will discuss the fundamentals of cube structure and vocabulary, including tuples, members, sets, hierarchies, and more. We will introduce and demonstrate the basic syntax of MDX with queries that include navigating hierarchies and even some time-based expressions. This session will give you the tools you need to write simple, yet meaningful, MDX queries in your own environment.
 
Mark Vaillancourt is an Information Management consultant for Digineer, a Microsoft partner based in Plymouth, MN. He has been working with SQL Server for 5 years and holds the MCITP – Business Intelligence Developer 2008 certification. With a background in Theater and Improvised Comedy, Mark makes sure that his presentations are both informative and fun.

Final Call for the MN SQL Saturday 149 Speakers

This is the final weekend to submit your sessions for the Minnesota SQL Saturday event coming up in September (and yes, for the first time this is actually on a Saturday).  The speaker abstracts can be submitted through the end of July and then the fun begins to start selecting the sessions and setting up the official schedule.

So far 85 sessions have been submitted by 36 different speakers and 19 of those submitted more than one session.

If we do a breakdown of the current list that has been submitted it looks like the following so far:

Just a word of warning, if you have only submitted 1 session you might want to review the list that has already been submitted.  If your topic is a duplicate the chances of you making the final cut might be tough, particularly if the duplicate submission speaker only submitted 1 as well:)

So if you were holding out to submit a session to speak your time is up, time to submit.  If you already submitted, time to review the full list and re-evaluate your submission(s) to secure your spot.

Call for Speakers

Submitted Sessions

Good luck to all the speakers that submitted and can’t wait for the big event.

PASSMN July 2012 Meeting

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week. This month Steve Hughes (@DataOnWheels) and Denny Cherry (@MrDenny) will be talking.  The topics this month will be on oData and optimizing SQL Server in virtual environments.  Be sure to register so that your name badge will be available for you at the Microsoft Technology Center when you arrive.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Magenium Solutions.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, July 17 from 4 to 7 p.m.

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=BFQM8K&role=attend&pw=FZ%2Bw3%3F%5BFm
• Meeting ID: BFQM8K
• Entry Code: FZ+w3?[Fm

Agenda:

• 4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:15-5:45 : O, there’s my data: The Open Data Protocol (OData) – Steve Hughes 
• 5:45-6:00 : Announcements and prize giveaways
• 6:00-7:00 : Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server Performance in a Virtual Environment – Denny Cherry

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Presentation 1:

O, there’s my data: The Open Data Protocol (OData) Earlier this year, Mark Souza from the SQL Server product team spoke at our user group.  During the Q&A I asked about interacting better with Oracle.  Mark mentioned that OData would be the best way to handle this.  I will be discussing what OData is and what tools are involved.  I will also explore how to create an OData feed and how to interact with it using tools such as PowerPivot, SSIS, and SQL Azure.  I will also examine the impact of OData for data professionals, both good, bad and ugly.  In the end, you should understand how OData works and where it can help us expose our data appropriately to our users.

Steve Hughes is a Principal Consultant at Magenic. His area of expertise is in data and business intelligence architecture on the Microsoft SQL Server platform. He was also the data architect for a SaaS company which delivered a transportation management solution for fleets across the United States. Steve has co-authored two books and delivered more than 30 presentations on SQL Server and data architecture over the past six years.  He also provides insights from the field on his blog at http://www.dataonwheels.com.

Presentation 2:

Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server Performance in a Virtual Environment In this session we’ll look over some of the things which you should be looking at within your virtual environment to ensure that you are getting the performance out of it that you should be.  This will include how to look for CPU performance issues at the host level.  We will also be discussing the Memory Balloon drivers and what they actually do, and how you should be configuring them, and why.  We’ll discuss some of the memory sharing technologies which are built into vSphere and Hyper-V and how they relate to SQL Server.  Then we will finish up with some storage configuration options to look at.

Denny Cherry is an independent consultant with over a decade of experience working with platforms such as Microsoft SQL Server, Hyper-V, vSphere and Enterprise Storage solutions. Denny’s areas of technical expertise include system architecture, performance tuning, security, replication and troubleshooting. Denny currently holds several of the Microsoft Certifications related to SQL Server for versions 2000 through 2008 including the Microsoft Certified Master for SQL Server 2008 as well as being a Microsoft MVP for several years and a VMware vExpert.