Tag: Microsoft (Page 2 of 4)

SQL Saturday Recap: #733 – Atlanta, GA

May 25, 2018 / jpries

This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — SQL Saturday #733 – Atlanta. Being my home event, and consistently a large and well-executed event, I look forward to this one every year and also volunteer to help out with room proctoring and any other help that is needed. Since the loss of the GSU Alpharetta Campus as a venue, the event has bounced around looking for a new home. This year, it was hosted at the Alpharetta Campus of Gwinnett Technical College, which I felt was an excellent venue (though not quite as convenient to me as last year’s Duluth Campus).

Like previous years, I felt the event was executed very well — with an army of organizers and volunteers, it seemed like everything was handled well with only minor mishaps here and there. The new location was great and will hopefully end up being a new permanent home for the event. As I was helping to work the event, I didn’t get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked, but everything I attended was excellent and time well spent.

Marco Russo presenting “DAX Optimization Examples” — my favorite session of the day. He easily could’ve filled multiple hours with his content and I look forward to seeing him speak again whenever I next get the opportunity!

SQL Saturday Recap: #698 – Nashville, TN

January 28, 2018 / jpries

On Saturday, January 13th, despite a pretty snowy winter weather forecast, Nashville held SQL Saturday #698. I watched twitter like a hawk in the hours leading up to making the drive, watching for reports on the roads in the area. All-in-all, the roads ended up being in decent condition for the drive, and I only really encountered any ice in the parking lot when I finally arrived at the hotel.

Saturday morning was frigid and it snowed throughout the day, but that wasn’t enough to stop the event. The organizers did an excellent job enduring the stress caused by the weather and in my opinion the event was a great success and went off without a hitch. Lunch was hot BBQ, which was excellent and a great upgrade from the standard boxed sandwich lunches which are typical fare at SQL Saturday events. As an added touch (and part of the yearly tradition) after the end of day raffle, SQL Saturday customized pint glasses were given out to all the attendees to take home as a souvenir. Another one for the shelf!

It was a great day and well worth the drive up to Nashville. Looking forward to attending again next time.

The snow fell throughout the day on Saturday at SQL Saturday Nashville.

SQL Saturday Recap: #624 – Chattanooga, TN

July 9, 2017 / jpries

On Saturday, June 24th, I attended SQL Saturday #624 in Chattanooga, TN. I’m a bit behind in posting this writeup, so I’ll keep it short. This was my second time attending an event in Chattanooga (and I believe their 3rd overall). The event went very smoothly and had a very well selected schedule of speakers and topics. As with other Chattanooga SQL Saturdays, nobody leaves without being offered Moon Pies, which is a great and fun touch!

I attended a number of excellent sessions and really enjoyed my day in Chattanooga. With my crazy summer schedule, this looked to be the only summer event I’d be able to attend, so I’m glad it was a good one. Looking forward to visiting Chattanooga again some time in the future! See below for a few of my pictures from the event:

SQL Saturday Recap: #578 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

December 12, 2016 / jpries

Saturday, December 10th marked the 2nd annual SQL Saturday Atlanta BI Edition. Atlanta is known for its massive SQL Saturday held every spring / summer, so I’m happy to see the smaller, more BI-focused winter event continuing on. With such a large number of SQL Server professionals in the area, there is definitely room for multiple events.

As with last year’s event, this one was a well-run event with no flaws that I was aware of. This year seemed to be a bit of a “back to basics” theme. Many of the extras that are frequently seen at SQL Saturday events — lots of sponsors, attendee bags and printed materials, speaker shirts, paper session evaluations, and other extras weren’t present. Instead, the focus was purely on providing a full day of content across multiple tracks, and you know what, that’s just fine. (Many) free donuts were provided for breakfast and boxed lunches were purchased, and everything was adequate. The core idea behind SQL Saturday is free training and networking, and the event delivered! I particularly thought the session lineup for this event was a great mix of topics.

SQL Saturday Recap: #560 – Charlotte, NC

September 18, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday 560 - Charlotte, NC This past Saturday marked Charlotte’s 5th consecutive SQL Saturday event, and my 4th in Charlotte (I missed last year’s due to a scheduling conflict) — SQL Saturday # 560. Also fun, this happened to mark the 20th SQL Saturday that I attended over the past few years — a pretty cool achievement!

As a change to this year over previous years, this year SQL Saturday Charlotte offered 2 all-day precons on Friday, both of which would sell out. With a “go big or go home” type attitude, they made life very difficult and forced me to choose between two incredible spears and presentations: Adam Machanic’s (B | T) “Tuning Your Biggest Queries” and Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” With two fantastic speakers to choose from, each with a great, and relevant, session, I had some decisions to make.

After an easy drive from north Atlanta to Charlotte after work on Thursday, I headed out bright and early Friday morning to attend Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” The precons were held in an off-campus location, the Ballantyne Center, which worked out to be a pretty decent venue. Adam’s precon was held in a standard classroom and Jen’s precon was held in a computer lab, which provided each person a computer with a solid network connection and the ability to follow along with the presentation slides and run the lab exercises locally.

Jen Underwood presenting Advanced Analytics

Jen’s Analytics precon was an excellent session and a great introduction to the topic. The topic is far too deep to cover in a single day session, but Jen did a good job of hitting the highlights and getting people introduced to the material and inspired by the possibilities of the subject with plenty of resources for further learning. This was certainly time well spent!

SQL Saturday Recap: #521 – Atlanta, GA

May 22, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #521 – Atlanta, GA

This past Saturday marked the annual event that many of us look forward to all year long. Called by some to be the “Summit of the South,” SQL Saturday Atlanta is always a large and very professionally run event which draws hordes of SQL Server Professionals nationwide. Again, this year, the event did not disappoint. Despite the initial overcast and rainy weather which opened up the day, a record number of 590 attendees attended this awesome event!

For the second year in a row, I volunteered my time to help make the event as great as it could be. For the first time in the past few years, I was did not attend any of the event’s preconference sessions, which typically run all day on Friday. That being said, the sessions that were being given were excellent topics which were presented by some truly great speakers. I’m sure everyone who attended learned a ton and had a great time.

While I didn’t attend any preconference sessions on Friday, SQL Saturday Atlanta did still begin for me on Friday when I headed over to the site Friday afternoon to begin helping with prep. We had a great group of organizers and volunteers onsite to perform the bag stuffing and venue setup. Additionally, this year, the decision was made to pre-print all of the attendee admission tickets, name badges, and raffle tickets (rather than relying on attendees to pre-print their items at home prior to the event to bring them with). This allowed for nicer name badges and perforated raffle tickets to be used, but was a very laborious process collating and assembling the packets for the morning’s registration. I ended up spending all of my time Friday afternoon helping out with the registration packet assembly process.

SQL Saturday Recap: #477 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

January 13, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #477 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

This past Saturday marked a great landmark for Atlanta — the first “BI Edition” SQL Saturday, and, for many of us, our first SQL Saturday of 2016! Atlanta has been hosting a regular SQL Saturday event for many years now, always with tremendous attendance. Based on the amount of interest in the regular SQL Saturday (usually around May of each year), it was great to see a BI focused edition launched.

With the regular event in the Spring, having this event in January was a great way to space out the two Atlanta events probably about as equally as they could be. And, for a first event, it seemed to be a tremendous success with a registration wait list and around 300 in attendance.

The event was held at the local Microsoft facility in Alpharetta, GA, where the monthly Atlanta MDF user group meetings are held. All told, the facility was a pretty good choice of venue (and definitely a convenient location), but suffered from some overcrowding. The facility had about half the sessions in roughly classroom sized rooms and half the sessions in much smaller conference room sized rooms. While these smaller rooms made for an interesting and more intimate setting, they ultimately filled up very quickly.

Unlike many SQL Saturdays, the event kicked off with an opening keynote and presentation in the large room (multiple rooms joined together technically). I enjoy it when a SQL Saturday begins with some sort of all-attendee opening remarks, it provides nice symmetry to the event (which always has a final closing remarks session), so hopefully more events will adopt this.

Dandy Weyn presenting the opening remarks at SQL Saturday Atlanta 2016, BI Edition.

PASS Summit 2015 Recap — My Third Summit

November 5, 2015 / jpries

Now in my third year, I recently attended PASS Summit in Seattle, Washington. This was my second visit to Seattle for PASS Summit, with my first Summit experience in Charlotte, NC. Having experience my “first time in Seattle for Summit” last year, I had a pretty good idea of where things were and what things would be going on and when and for the most part, things followed the previous year’s pattern very closely.

I arrived in Seattle a few days early so I could work some sightseeing in. While it’s generally not a good idea to try to have a rental car during the conference, in the days leading up to the conference when you want to see a lot of places, it’s the way to go. I rented a car from the airport and made my way down to Portland for a couple of nights.

I spent my first two days of vacation, Saturday and Sunday doing some geocaching and exploring the Portland area. The weather was overcast but nice the first day and lots of rain the second day. I’d really wanted to see Mt. Hood, but unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate at all.

Mt. Rainier while driving down to Portland after arriving in Seattle

Counting Down to PASS Summit 2015

September 14, 2015 / jpries

We’re a little over a month away from the start of PASS Summit 2015 on October 27th, it’s time for planning to begin. PASS Summit is an annual conference (usually held in Seattle, WA) of over 5,000 data professionals focusing on all things SQL Server. Unlike many conferences, this is very much a “for the people, by the people” type of conference where practical knowledge is the focus.

As with any large conference, there is a lot of planning to be done to get the most out of attending. In additional to all the usual travel and accommodation logistics, there is whether or not to attend any pre-conference sessions, which of the over 200 sessions to plan to attend over the 3 days of the event, and which after hours events to attend.

Sample Data — An Intro to Adventure Works

September 8, 2015 / jpries

Sample Data — An Intro to Adventure Works

From time to time, it’s handy to have access to some good, solid sample data. Now, actually coming up with a robust set of sample data that has no tie back to any proprietary business data can actually be a tricky prospect. It’s easy to generate a small amount of good data yourself, or a large amount of really random data, but neither of these are very robust. Fortunately, Microsoft comes to the rescue with their fictional company, Adventure Works, and the Adventure Works Databases.

Microsoft provides the following bio for the Adventure Works company over at Technet:

Adventure Works Cycles, the fictitious company on which the AdventureWorks sample databases are based, is a large, multinational manufacturing company. The company manufactures and sells metal and composite bicycles to North American, European and Asian commercial markets. While its base operation is located in Bothell, Washington with 290 employees, several regional sales teams are located throughout their market base.

In 2000, Adventure Works Cycles bought a small manufacturing plant, Importadores Neptuno, located in Mexico. Importadores Neptuno manufactures several critical subcomponents for the Adventure Works Cycles product line. These subcomponents are shipped to the Bothell location for final product assembly. In 2001, Importadores Neptuno, became the sole manufacturer and distributor of the touring bicycle product group.

Coming off a successful fiscal year, Adventure Works Cycles is looking to broaden its market share by targeting their sales to their best customers, extending their product availability through an external Web site, and reducing their cost of sales through lower production costs.

In addition to providing a realistic scenario for the Adventure Works company and a database full of realistic sample data, Microsoft continually updates the Adventure Works database for new versions of SQL Server and makes numerous variations of the databases available to highlight different technologies.