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What I am reading in 2011- week two

Posted on January 14, 2011 by johnsterrett | Leave a comment

This year I am going to try to keep better tabs on what I am reading on the intertubes and why I found the posts interesting. Here is my first list of the year. I hope you enjoy these links. I know I did.

Writing a Technical Blog: Why to do it and what to write about – Kendra Little (blog | @Kendra_Little) wrote a great post for someone who is technical and is thinking about blogging. Actually, If you work within IT and don’t blog you should really read this blog post!

How to Obtain and Install SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates – Glenn Berry (blog | @glennalanberry) adds a great blog post explaining RTM, Hotfix, Cumulative Updates and Service Packs with SQL Server. Next he goes over how you can get them and when and how you should apply them.

How to Rehearse a Presentation – Brent Ozar (blog | @BrentO) blesses us with another great post about speaking in a technical environment. If you have goals to be a paid technical speaker I highly recommend checking out his advice in this post.

How To Choose A Topic For Speaking – Joe Webb (blog | @JoeWebb) give us another example on how you should choose your topic for speaking.

Cloud Computing for IT Pros – My local IT Pro Microsoft Evangelist Youg Chow produced this is a six part series going over the basics of cloud computing for IT pros. It starts with defining what is a service.

New SQL User Group in Wheeling, West Virginia’s first meeting is January 20th

Posted on January 6, 2011 by johnsterrett | Leave a comment

If you caught my last blog post and reached the bottom of the page then you noticed that we are starting the first SQL Server User Group in West Virginia. Last year we hosted our first SQL Saturday and drew interest for a user group. I have teamed up with a few local friends and we are excited to see where our user group goes.

If you would like to attend our first meeting click here to signup so we will have pizza for everyone.

The Mission

The mission of the Wheeling SQL Server User Group is to provide an opportunity that will allow database developers, database administrators and all other IT professionals who work with databases to connect, share and learn for free. While everyone’s shop might be unique the majority of the DBA’s have similar projects and problems. We will allow all attendees the opportunity to share their experiences while they can also build their soft skills.

Our First Meeting

Our first meeting will be held on January 20th, 2011. Everyone who attends will be an instant winner as there will be free pizza and free membership to the coolest organization for SQL Server Professionals. We are excited to have Jose Chinchilla (blog | @SQLJoe) speak. The following is our agenda:

6:00pm to 6:15pm – Network and eat free Pizza
6:15pm to 6:30pm – Establish a few goals for the group and eat more free pizza
6:30pm to 7:30pm – The Main Event (Learning SSIS under 1 hour)

Abstract:

Need to know what is the corresponding SSIS transformation or task to a specific T-SQL statement? How do you accomplish Unions, Joins, and Merges in SSIS? How do you do CASE statements in SSIS? How do you group and aggregate data in SSIS? In this session I will cover the some of the most important SSIS control flow and data flow tasks to jumpstart DBAs and Developers into SSIS with SQL Server 2008-R2. At the end of this interactive demo, you will be able to identify what control flow tasks and data flow transformations can be used in place of T-SQL statements and scripts. I will also cover how to accomplish in SSIS:

• Basic SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE statements

• Inner and Outer joins

• CAST and CONVERT

• CASE statement • Sorting, Grouping and Aggregate functions (SUM, COUNT, MAX, AVG)

• MERGE and Unions

• Loops (WHILE) and more

Bio:
Jose Chinchilla is a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator and Business Intelligence Developer working as a BI consultant for a Tampa based full service consulting firm. Jose has12+ years of experience in IT and has focused his career in OLTP and OLAP database design, development and administration and specializes in ETL/ELT, Data Warehousing and Multidimensional Analysis using SQL Server 2008 BI tools. He is also the current president of the Tampa Bay area Business Intelligence User Group and Official PASS Chapter. He is an avid twitterer under the @SQLJoe handle and blogs at http://www.sqljoe.com.

First SQLSaturday in Wheeling, West Virginia was a Success!

Posted on December 30, 2010 by johnsterrett | 2 comments

After SQL Saturday #36 on May 1st 2010 my wife and I headed to Spain. Somehow this post got lost in the shuffle when I got back. I thought it is important to share my thoughts of the event so here it is.

The first SQLSaturday in West Virginia can be summed up in two sentences. The SQL Server Community is bleeping awesome. The Ohio Valley is bleeping awesome. I know unfortunately I will leave some people out but I would like to thank the following individuals for their advice and support Andy Warren, John Parkinson, Thomas LaRock, Jeremiah Peschka, Justin Siebert, Joelle Ennis, and The Greater Wheeling Chapter of AITP.

Its now a little past a month six months after the first SQLSaturday in West Virginia and I am glad to share my thoughts on the event. First, I would like to say we held it down for the DBA’s in the small cities who have dreams of hosing a SQLSaturday. Don’t quote me on this but I believe we are the only SQLSaturday host city with a population under 50,000.

When we first started this mission in November 2009 our goal was to have 50 to 100 people register. We actually had registration at 100 and had 70 people attend. We had three tracks that delivered 16 13 sessions presented by 11 9 speakers.

Things that worked

Using WVNCC as venue – The West Virginia Northern Community College campus in Downtown Wheeling allowed us to use their facility. We had the ballroom which held 100 people, two class rooms held 50+ and two smaller class rooms that held 30 attendees. This was a great fit and we are very grateful that they hosted the meeting for us.
Volunteers – We had a super all-star team of volunteers on hand for the SQL Saturday. Did I mention that the volunteers were awesome? There were, and they all did a great job.
Selected Speakers – All of the speakers did a great job. The evaluations showed that everyone appreciated the presentations. We need a better way to deliver results to speakers. We will work on that for next year.
Lunch – The box lunches from Panera Bread were a hit. The food arrived as scheduled. One of our volunteers was also arranged to have the Catholic Charities pick up the leftover food. Once again, did I mention that our volunteers rock?

Things that need improved

Get more people involved – While we had plenty of support for the big day only two people did the majority of the pre-day work. Hopefully, we can get more people involved earlier next year.
Build Higher Goals – Our venue can support more people. We tried our best to keep it simple because we didn’t know what we were doing as this was the first major information technology event in Wheeling, WV for years. Now we know what we are doing so we should try to go buck wild next year.
Evaluations – I will take the blame here and say that we failed. We didn’t have a good system for generating feedback.
More Speakers – We cut it close with filling up our three tracks. Next year I we will need to be more active with pulling speakers. If you are interested in speaking next year contact me and I will get you on our contact list.

Thanks to the speakers

We would like to give a shout out to all the speakers for making SQLSaturday in Wheeling happen. You were all awesome. Check out their blogs and tweets.

Allen White (Blog | Twitter)
John Hidey (Blog | Twitter)
Jeremiah Peschka (Blog | Twitter)
Brownwyn Altizer
Von Scarberry (Twitter)
David Hoerster (Blog | Twitter)
Tim Beamer
Matt Van Horn (Blog)
John Sterrett (Blog | Twitter)

Thanks to the sponsors

Gold
- Confio
- Regional Economic Development
Silver
Bronze
Host
- West Virginia Northern Community College
Books
- Apress
- InformIT
- SQLShare

Whats Next?

2nd Annual SQL Saturday in West Virginia – This is correct, we are excited to give it another run and are targeting June 2011. We will shoot out an update to let everyone know when we have an official date.
Wheeling SQL Server User Group – Hey John there is no SQL Server User Group in West Virginia what are you smoking? First, I don’t smoke and second there will be. Our first meeting will be on January 20th. Check out my blog during the first week of January for more information.

Can a SQL Saturday happen in Wheeling, WV – Yes it can and it was a success. We look forward to the 2nd Annual Wheeling, WV SQL Saturday.
It’s on Like Donkey Kong – This was a quick blog post to announce that we were going to do the first SQL Saturday in West Virginia.
Wheeling, WV to Dallas, TX a SQL Saturday #56 Recap – My recap of the first BI SQL Saturday.

2 Comments

Posted in Events, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Tagged SQL, SQL Server, sqlpass, SQLSaturday

Policy-Based Management Myths (2 of 3)

Posted on December 16, 2010 by johnsterrett | Leave a comment

A few weekends ago I gave an “Introduction to Policy-Based Management and Central Management System” at SQL Saturday 61 in DC. Do to some great questions I am going to focus on some myths that come up with Policy-based Management this week. Check back through the week to catch all three myths. Today we will cover the second myth.

By default a policy using the database facets will run against all databases

The myth is true and false. Actually, using the default database target condition (every database) the myth is true. If you build your own condition for the target then the myth can be false.

Lets take another look at the “Auto Shrink Database” policy that comes out of the box with SQL Server 2008. When you evaluate the policy you will see that the system databases (msdb, master, model, tempdb) are not included.

My first thought is to checkout the target properties. Maybe for some reason the system databases are exempt. Looking at the target below you will see that every database is suppose to be included. Obviously, this means all databases are included, right? No, sorry system databases are not included.

How do I evaluate policies against all databases?

Lets create a new condition that we will use as our target condition. In a nutshell we need a condition that shows all databases when they are system objects or are not system objects. If you select the database facet you will notice there is an IsSystemObject field. This is our ticket getting all databases.

Lets now change the target condition to use the condition created above. We will no longer have every databases as our target condition and select our new System and User Databases target condition.

Now lets evaluate the policy again. You will now see all user databases and system databases as I expected when you used the default target condition.

Come back on Monday to find our last installment of the Policy-Based Management myths.

First look: Code-Name “Beluga”

Posted on November 15, 2010 by johnsterrett | 4 comments