SQL Live 360 Kicks off Today!

Hello Dear Reader!  Today in beautiful Orlando FL at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort the Live 360 Conference kicks off.  Live 360 combines 4 different conferences into one.  Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Cloud & Virtualization all have their own conferences.  I’m helping to kick off the SQL Live 360 by presenting not once, not twice, but three times today!  

Before we dive into the content I want to say a big Thank You to my wife Silva.  Every time I’m presenting at a conference she’s taking off work to be at home and manage the kiddos.  Without her none of this is possible for me.  Thanks Silva!

“So Balls”, you say, “What are you presenting on?”

Excellent question Dear Reader.  We will be kicking off the day with Trimming Indexes Getting Your Database in Shape, next up is Transparent Data Encryption Inside and Out in SQL Server 2012, and we end the day with the Page & Row Compression Deep Dive in SQL Server 2012.  Conferences are expensive and I want to make sure that you get the most out of your experience.  So to help you decide if you should be spending your time with me, I’m placing the decks and demos online now.  They are also live on the Resource Page.  Attendees should have a copy of all of this information on their conference CD, but just in case you didn’t find it here we go!

KICKING IT OFF WITH A BANG

If you’re in town for the conference I hope you get a chance to stop by.  Here are the abstracts for each presentation:

Trimming Indexes Getting Your Database In Shape

Indexes are a wonderful thing.  We should be using them, and we should be maintaining them.  But over time our production databases start to look a little pudgy around the mid-section.  Maybe they are a little bloated with Unused Indexes, maybe they have Duplicate Indexes, and possibly even Reverse Indexes.  The first step to fixing these problems it so see if you have them, and if you do the second is to set about fixing them. You could be costing yourself CPU cycles, I/Op’s, and space and never even know it.

Slide Deck, Demos

Transparent Data Encryption Inside and Out in SQL 2012

Security is a very important part of your job and in how data is utilized.  We have many tools to make data more secure, and starting in SQL 2008 we were able to add Transparent Data Encryption to that list.  Find out What it does and What it doesn’t do, How it effects Read-Only Filegroups, Performance, Compression (Backup and Row/Page), What the X.509 Encryption Standard is and Why you should be careful of what you store and where, and other Advance Features as well as some tips on how to manage it.

Slide Deck, Demos

Page & Row Compression Deep Dive with SQL Server 2012

Page and Row Compression are powerful new tools. Page & Row with SQL 2008 RTM, and Page & Row with Unicode Compression with SQL 2008 R2, and Spatial Types in SQL 2012.  We can turn it on, we can turn it off, but we want more!  What are Access Methods and how in the SQL Engine do they affect Compression?  What are the “Gotchas” of Page Compression?  How does Compression differ in the way it treats Non-Leaf & Leaf Level pages?  What additional functionality did we get in DBCC Page, DMV’s, Perfmon Counters, and Extended Events to support our usage of Compression?  How do complex query plans affect Compression?  Come find out!

Slide Deck, Demos

LUNCH!

That’s not all, on top of having 3 great sessions to choose from if you’re still not sick of me we’ve got a speaker round table on Wednesday where I’ll be hosting a table on SQL Server 2012 and new features.  While I may not have presented on them there are a lot of great 2012 topics like Columnstore Indexes, Always On Availability Groups, Always On Clustering Improvements, and more that we could chat about.

Great SQL People like MVP’s Jen Stirrup(@JenStirrup | blog), Grant Fritchey (@GFritchey | blog), Allen White (@SQLRunr | Blog),  Thomas Larock (@SQLRockstar | Blog), and William Pearson (@Bill_Pearson) will be there hosting different tables as well!

WRAP IT UP

Okay with that being said, it should be a fun filled week of SQL Learning.  There will be some wonderful night time activities as part of the conference as well. 

  I won’t make it to all of them, Wednesday night is the baby’s Christmas play at her day care can’t miss that!  For the rest of the week though I look forward to getting to see you all.

If you are in town I hope you get to stop by and say “Hi BALLS!”, and have a great time!

Thanks,

Brad

PASS Summit Page & Row Compression Deep Dive

Hello Dear Reader!  Today is the Big day for me here at the PASS Summit 2012.  I'll be presenting the Page & Row Compression Deep Dive today at 9:45 am until 11:00 am in room 305-TCC.

The last day of the Summit is upon us and with it almost over I get more an more anxious to get back home and see my family.  Soon we will be in the weekend and, for most of us, we will no longer be in Seattle.  I've got some good stuff that I'm cooking up just to make sure that you have plenty of compression goodness to play around with.

"So Balls", you say, "You did this presentation last year, why should I attend?"  

Great Question Dear Reader!  Away we go! .




PAGE & ROW COMPRESSION DEEP DIVE

First let's start with the abstract:

Page and row compression are powerful new tools. Introduced in SQL Server 2008 RTM and enhanced with Unicode compression in SQL Server 2008 R2, the compression tools now work with SQL Server 2012's spatial types. We can turn compression on, and we can turn it off – but we want more! 

What are access methods and how in the SQL Engine do they affect compression? What are the “gotchas” of page compression? How does compression differ in the way it treats leaf and non-leaf level pages? What additional functionality did we get in DBCC Page, DMVs, Perfmon Counters, and Extended Events to support compression? And how do complex query plans affect compression? Come to this session to find out!

There are a lot of very cool and deep things we did last year, but as the year goes along I keep trying to dig deep down and find some really cool stuff for us to look at.  The same thing is great but this year I want to push it even deeper.

I've got 3 things to tempt you Dear Reader:

1. We will go deeper into the structure of a record this year
2. We will discuss Mid & End Page Splits and What they mean for Compression
3. We will tackle Statistics in Compressed Indexes and how Page Compression attempts affect them.

I've got new demo's that I'll be rolling out.


My Slide deck and demo's are already live on the PASS Website click here to get them.  Here is a link on the Resources page for them as well, click here, and go down to the PAGE & ROW COMPRESSION DEEP DIVE header.  Under that I've got a section for PASS Summit 2012, the latest version of the slide deck as well as all of the demo scripts are there as well!

Have a great last day and safe travels home Dear Reader, I hope to see you this morning!

Thanks,

Brad

SQL PASS Summit 2012 Keynote Day 1

Hello Dear Reader!  I'm sitting in the Keynote now writting up a summary of the event.  More to come!