SQLSaturday #362 Austin – I’m Presenting

SQLSaturday is finally happening again in Austin (technically in Round Rock) on January 31, 2015 and I’m glad to announce that I will be presenting. My topic is “CIS Benchmarks: Your Guide to Consensus Security”. The Austin SQL folks have been great participants at the past SQLSaturdays that we’ve held in Houston, so I’m glad to promote and participate in their event. There is a great lineup of speakers and topics which you can see here. There are also a couple of pre-conference seminars on Friday. Check out all info for content and registration here.

If you aren’t familiar with SQLSaturday, this is a FREE training event put on by local SQL Server User Groups. The event concept has grown greatly over the past several years and on almost every Saturday of the year, there is one or more SQLSaturdays occurring somewhere in the world.

There are just a few more days to register – hope to see you there!

SQLSaturday #308 Houston – Selected Sessions Final

Thanks to everyone who submitted sessions for SQLSaturday #308 in Houston on May 10^th. I think this was definitely the most difficult selection process of the 3 SQLSaturdays that we have held. Lots of great sessions were submitted from a really large pool of speakers. For those who were not selected – PLEASE do not take this personally! It primarily came down to a balance of session topics spread across as many speakers as possible – we have 48 speakers for 60 sessions.

If you only submitted one session and we had multiple similar sessions to choose from then if your abstract didn’t really stand out in that category, it may not have been selected. If you only submitted one session on a topic that no one else submitted and we did not select it, it may be because we thought the topic was too narrow or the abstract didn’t clearly express what you planned to present. If you think it may be your abstract keeping you from being selected, check out any of several posts that Brent Ozar has done over the years on Abstract writing for tips to improve. And, in the future I would recommend submitting at least 2 topics for program committees to choose from to improve your chances!

So, with that all said, here are the selected sessions alphabetized by speaker last name.

Last Name	First Name	Session Title
Adams	Ryan	SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Quickstart
Adams	Ryan	How Active Directory affects SQL Server
Bansal	Amit R S	Mind your IO: Resource Governor shows you How
Barnes	Bill	Fill Factor: Performance or Nuisance?
Bell	Chris	The Spy Who Loathed Me – An Intro to SQL Security
Bertrand	Aaron	T-SQL : Bad Habits & Best Practices
Bertrand	Aaron	Top 5 Ways to Write Effective triggers
Bourgon	Michael	SQL Watchdog – find out instantly when SQL changes in production
Brown	Wesley	Fundamentals of SAN, NAS and IP Storage
Chaves	Warner	The Super Trace: Introduction to Extended Events
Cherry	Denny	Storage For the DBA
Clark	Tamera	45 min to build your first SSRS report
Cook	John	SQL Server 2012 Analytic Functions
Costello	Tim	Windowing Functions
Costello	Tim	Pro Tips: Tuning the data flow in SSIS
Curnutt	Mindy	SQL Server Bingo – Install, Migration & Config
Cutshall	Aaron	The Lost Science of Set Theory and Relational Algebra
D’Antoni	Joseph	SQL Server–All About HA and DR
D’Antoni	Joseph	In-Memory Columnstore Indexes–Make Your Data Warehouse Fly
Edmondson	Garret	Measuring Data Warehouse Performance
Edmondson	Garret	Data Warehouse ETL
Edwards	Lori	SQL Server Statistics – What Are The Chances?
Gable	Glenda	Data Warehouse Indexes
Harp	Vicky	Edge Case Testing for the Database Professional
Harp	Vicky	Care and Feeding of Your System Databases
Hays	Mike	Troubleshooting Your Network Connections
Herold	Amy	Making the Leap from Developer to DBA
Hokanson	Kris	Beyond the Where: Full Text Search tips and tricks
LeBlanc	Thomas	Attributes & Hierarchies in Analysis Services 2012
LeBlanc	Thomas	Execution Plan Basics – Beginners
Lopez	Carlos	The Transaction Log Internals
Lopez	Karen	Database Design Contentious Issues
Lopez	Karen	Windows Azure SQL Database Design: Concepts and Trade-offs
Loski	Russ	Introduction to BIML and BIMLScript
Loski	Russ	SSIS project deployments with multiple developers
McCown	Jennifer	T-SQL Code Sins
McCown	Sean	DIY Performance Reporting
McCown	Sean & Jennifer	DBA Career Roadmap
Mendo	AJ	DBA Survival Guide: Daily Checklist and Server Monitoring
Mitchell	Tim	Scripting in SSIS
Mitchell	Tim	15 Quick Tips for SSIS Performance
Moreign	Valentino and Anthony {Tex}	The Cloud and I
Murphy	Jim	Mission Possible: Interactive Performance Troubleshooting – Indexes
Norman	Tom	Converting Unreliable Deployments Into Consistent Releases
Parekh	Aashish	Speed, Depth & Flexibility – Having it all with real-time SSAS
Rodarte	Rudy	Expand your TSQL: Intersect, Except, and Apply
Schilling	Dane	Taming the T-Log
Serra	James	Best Practices to Deliver BI Solutions
Serra	James	Enhancing your career: Building your personal brand
Speshock	Carl	Microsoft Predictive Analytics/Data Mining Overview
Stein	David	Writing Your First BimlScript
Sterrett	John	Table Partitioning: the Secret Weapon for your Big Data Problems.
Sterrett	John	Proactive Monitoring with PBM and CMS
Stewart	Robert	SSAS – An Introduction to Multidimensional Cubes
Tidwell	Lance	SQL Server Agent: The life preserver for the drowning DBA
Wilson	Derek	Tabular Data Visualized by PowerView
Wong	Jason	Ah, ha, how do you automate database administration?

If you are thinking there are some pretty big topics missing from the above list, you are correct! We will be having 3 additional sessions presented by TechEd speakers on PowerBI, Hybrid Cloud, and In-Memory.

The final schedule will be posted on the SQLSaturday #308 website in the next few days! So stay tuned!

 

SQLSaturday #308 Houston – Speaker Selections #3

Today (March 21, 2014) is the final day for speakers to submit their sessions for SQLSaturday #308 in Houston on May 10.  We are already building up a great slate of speakers (announced here and here) and today we are pre-announcing that the following MVP speakers will also be presenting:

• John Paul Cook (website)   – SQL Server 2012 Analytic Functions
• Tim Mitchell (twitter | website) – to be determined SSIS topic
• James Serra (twitter | website) – BI/DW or Professional Development session topic still to be determined

Stay tuned for the complete slate and schedule to be finalized soon!

Spread the news to your colleagues and register to attend this free training event now as space will be limited!

SQLSaturday #308 Houston – Speaker Selections #2

Last night I revealed the names of three speakers selected for our free training event on May 10 at San Jacinto College – South.  Today, I’m glad to announce that my fellow Texans Sean McCown (website) and Jen McCown (twitter | website) the husband and wife team also known collectively as the MidnightDBAs will also be speaking.  We haven’t finalized which of their submitted sessions will be on the schedule, but you can probably expect something related to Backups, PowerShell, Code Sins, or Career Paths!

If you plan to submit, do it quickly as the call for speakers to submit their sessions for SQLSaturday #308 ends on Friday, March 21, 2014.

Otherwise, spread the news to your colleagues and register to attend this free training event now as space will be limited!

SQLSaturday #308 Houston – Speaker Selections #1

Although there are a couple of more days for speakers to submit their sessions for SQLSaturday #308 in Houston on May 10, we are excited to start announcing over the next several days who is confirmed to present so that both presenters and attendees can start making their plans.

We hope to have the final schedule determined by the end of next week around March 28.

So without further ado… the following Microsoft SQL Server MVPs are planning to present the session titles shown.

In alphabetical order:

• Aaron Bertrand (twitter | website) – Top 5 Ways to Write Effective Triggers
• Denny Cherry (twitter | website) – Storage For the DBA
• Karen Lopez (twitter | website) – Windows Azure SQL Database Design: Concepts and Trade-offs

We are looking forward to hosting these speakers and announcing more speakers over the next few days.

Spread the news to your colleagues and register to attend this free training event now as space will be limited!

Speaker Submissions for SQLSaturday #308 Houston Still Open!

Speaker submissions for SQLSaturday #308 Houston on May 10^th are still open, but you only have until next Friday, March 21, to apply!  As of 5:30pm CDT on March 14, we have 33 distinct speakers who have submitted, but we will be selecting 50-60 sessions!  Thus, there is still plenty of opportunity to submit with a high probability of having your session selected.  However, be sure to check out what others have already submitted (under Submitted Sessions) and come up with your niche topic!  So, write up that abstract this weekend and apply! 

SQL Server 2012 Security Benchmark Released

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Security Benchmarks Division released “CIS Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Database Engine Benchmark V1.0.0” on January 6, 2014. 

This is a consensus-based development of security best practices which have become the de facto security configuration standards.  If you are in charge of your SQL Server security configuration, you need a copy of this document – it is what your auditors will be using soon! 

I am currently serving as one of the editors for the SQL Server benchmarks. We are in progress with updating the SQL Server 2008 R2 benchmark previously released in late 2012.  If you discover any items we should update\add\delete in that document or in the newly released 2012 benchmark, please either leave a comment here on my blog or better yet join the benchmark community consensus team (http://benchmarks.cisecurity.org/community)!

SQL Server 2008 R2 Security Benchmark Released

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Security Benchmarks Division released “CIS Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Database Engine Benchmark V1.0.0” on November 16, 2012. The best I can tell, this benchmark can also be used with SQL Server 2008.

This is a consensus-based development of security best practices which have become the de facto security configuration standards.  If you are in charge of your SQL Server security configuration, you need a copy of this document – it is what your auditors will be using soon!  

 

 

SQLSaturday #150 – Baton Rouge: Presentations Uploaded

My presentation slide decks and demo scripts from SQLSaturday #150 have been uploaded.

• Managing SQL Server in the Enterprise with TLAs
• SQL Server 2012 Database Engine – Why Upgrade?

Thanks to the planning team for selecting my sessions and thanks to everyone who attended my sessions – I enjoyed the opportunity to share my passion.   

SQLSaturday #150 – Baton Rouge – Signup Now!

There’s an awesome FREE technical training event coming to Baton Rouge on August 4, 2012. That’s right; SQLSaturday and Tech Day 2012 will be held at LSU’s new College of Business facility.  This is the fourth year that the Baton Rouge technical community has held this event and they expect around 400 people – if you live anywhere close by, then you should be there!  William Assaf (blog | twitter) even got some local TV exposure for the event this year.  

This event is bigger than your normal SQLSaturday. In addition to tracks for the SQL Server professional, there are also tracks for .NET developers, Windows Phone developers, SharePoint, and general professional development. Check out the full schedule here, and then sign up here.

Why am I plugging this event? Well, for one thing the Baton Rouge SQL Server community has always come west across the state line to support our SQLSaturdays in Houston. Secondly, I’ll be speaking at their event this year on “Managing SQL Server in the Enteprise with TLAs”.  TLA is “Three-Letter Acronym” for those unsure. We have lots of those in techno-speak. I’ll be covering CMS, PBM, EPM, MDW, and more…. If you work with SQL Server and don’t know what those are or how they can help you, then register today for SQLSaturday #150 and come to my session at 8:20am in Room 1700! 

Addendum: I’ll now also be presenting a second session “SQL Server 2012 Database Engine – Why Upgrade?” in the 2:45pm slot in Room 1700.

 

If you can’t attend this event, then check here for all the currently scheduled SQLSaturdays in the US and around the world!