SQLSaturday #615 Baltimore 2017
6 May 2017 at Loyola University

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SQL Development is a broad subject with many roads to choose from. Often times SQL Developers feel overwhelmed and unsure which areas they need to focus on. The purpose of this session is to give a high-level overview and present paths for further study and growth. Subjects reviewed in this session will include coding patterns, error handling, and execution plans. Demonstrations of free tools will also help developers find ways of simplifying their daily tasks. Attendees will leave this session empowered with knowledge and directions for further growth.

This session focuses on Microsoft’s BI capabilities within SQL Server and its abilities to make advanced easy to use, accessible, insightful, and actionable decisions, all while helping clients increase organizational performance. Through several releases, Microsoft dramatically enhanced the Microsoft BI platform. During this session Plus Consulting, one of Microsoft's top global BI partners, will explore the improvements to SQL Server self-service reporting and talk about creating blended value from your BI platform. We’ll show you why the combination of Microsoft Office, PowerBI and SQL Server are an excellent solution for creating self-service dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, pivots, data exploration and discovery.

We will take a look at an introduction and overview of Azure Analysis Services - Microsoft 's cloud-based analytical engine and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. We will discuss Azure Analysis Services features and capabilities, use cases, provisioning and deployment, managing and monitoring, tools, and report creation. Although Azure Analysis Service is in Public Preview at the time of this session submission, we will incorporate the latest publicly available information.

If you've ever wondered what that other service is in your configuration manager then this is the class for you. Full text indexing allows you to write queries to scan large text fields without having to do a complete table scan every time. We'll talk about installing, setting up, maintaining, and using full text indexes to their fullest!

The numbers on the monitor go up and then they go down. Which numbers are the most important? How do I know if the change I made is helping my environment? This sessions reviews some of the important areas to understand before you start making changes to your environment and how to measure them.

If some of your databases have grown to over 1TB and it has become a challenge to maintain them - or if you are anticipating what to do in the future when they do - then this talk is for you! In this session, I will provide some practical advice on managing VLDBs with SQL server, focusing on common problem areas for new and experienced DBAs alike, including index maintenance, integrity checks, archival, backups and restores.

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This course will focus on the fundamentals of strategic SQL Server index design and creation. Terms that will be covered and clarified: clustered index, non-clustered index, uniqueness, covering index, fill-factor, scan, seek, key lookup, and fragmentation. This is a beginning level course for those who have always found indexes confusing and somewhat elusive. Lots of valuable information will be provided in a short amount of time.

There was a lot of excitement at the Connect() developer conference in November 2016. Two major announcements were made at the conference. First, visual studio code now runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Second, SQL Server v.Next is coming to Linux. This means a developer can develop code against SQL Server in a Window less environment. If you are really passionate about Linux, join the hundreds downloading and testing this preview release. Coverage: 1 - Core code deployed for multiple environments. 2 - Installs on Red Hat and Ubuntu flavors of linux. 3 - Generate ssh key. 4 - Deploy standard Red Hat image. 5 - Install core engine and tools on linux. 6 - Connect to engine via sqlcmd. 7 - Open firewall for external access. 8 - Create database on Linux via SSMS in windows. 9 - Load data into table via bcp. 10 - Supports docker (container) images. 11 - Current limitations. 12 - Future road map.

We have more information available to us today than ever before. So much so that we run the risk of not being able to tell concise stories. There's a lot more to creating that story than just getting the correct information. Come learn not just the do's and don'ts, but the whys…

This session will present detailed examples of the newest features added or enhanced in SSIS 2016. Including but not limited to: True template based package design Incremental package deployment Non-Admin logging access Error Handling by Column name (prior versions only gave that cryptic lineage ID number) SSISDB AlwaysOn Availability Group support and many more... The session will include a limited number of slides followed but demo examples of each new feature which will also be provided for download so attendees while have access to them for reference after the event.

If you are new kid in the world of Big Data? Let's look at some of the topics of Big Data. We will learn about foundations of big data and social physics, What is the importance of data quality and data privacy. We will have a quick look at personal sensors and human behavior This module will explore the various sources of data, how to leverage personal sensors to predict behavior, and introduce you to the key features of 'Funf' We will explore the basics of data dynamics and data interrogation, and the importance of interdisciplinary research and testing on yourself, to assist in analyzing a data set. What are the fundamentals and structure of peer networks? We will also talk about HDInsight and take a look at Microsoft's items in play.

Most DBAs use multiple native and third party tools to fully document SQL Server instances yet still dont get all the objects. Even using Visual Studio and Database Projects, not all objects are exported because they live at the server level, above the database. Using Powershell, we will script out an organized set of files that can be checked into any Source Control system and or used for Disaster Recovery purposes. Objects exported include: SQL Agent Jobs/Alerts/Schedules, NT Service Credentials, SSIS-MSDB, SSIS-Catalog, SSAS Cubes, SSRS Reports, Logins, Server Configs, Linked Servers, DB Mail Operators/Accounts, Server Triggers and much more

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Documentation is one of the most critical, yet most blatantly ignored and disrespected tasks when it comes to technology. Businesses and technical professionals ignore documentation at their own risk. This session discusses what tech writing and documentation is about and why it's critical for business. It also explores possible reasons for why it's ignored, how documentation can be improved, and how "non-writers" can contribute to the process.

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Microsoft introduced the APPLY operator in SQL Server 2005. This under-used, non-standard operator can help us solve a number of common (and not-so-common) problems with elegant code which performs well. We will look several problem spaces in which the APPLY operator shines, such as joining to table-valued functions, getting the top N child records for each parent record, string splitting, and word matching. With the use of these examples, we will gain a deeper understanding of when to use the APPLY operator.

In this session Thomas will explore and explain the different options that exist in SQL Server to temporary store data and show you when to use which and why not the others. This will cover #, ##, @, Non-Durable Memory Optimized and regular user tables. He will also present alternatives like common table expressions.

Come see Microsoft's Power tools demonstrated for advanced analytics and hear about Microsoft's embrace of Open Source and the Hadoop platform. We'll also present on Microsoft's tools for handling Big Data, such as the Parallel Data Warehouse and HDInsights. Along the way, we will introduce Microsoft Azure and show how the Azure Cloud can help developer's get access to resources quickly and easily.

In this session attendees will learn how to make decisions around which technologies to use when delivering BI solutions including some exciting new BI features in SQL 2016. We will explore the starting point of the project with data sources, step through the ETL decision making process and on to picking the medium for best delivery of content, while learning some best practices along the way.

This session will cover what is Streaming Analytics and the various use cases. We will demonstrate the creation of a Streaming Analytics process which will output the data to a dashboard for review. The intention is to provide insights in how this technology can potentially be leveraged by the SQL community.

Keeping up with technology can feel like a treadmill; you keep running but never get anywhere. We'll take a look at ways to keep up with technology without pulling your hair out. We'll balance cost versus benefit for the different types of learning. We will also talk about learning goals.

The importance of proper table design cannot be underestimated. Misconceptions could lead into serious problems not only in terms of database performance, but also it can effect disk space management and interactivity of user interface as well. In this session the audience will have a sensible walk-through of database and table design in detail, encompassing a number of key areas of focus ranging from Data Types to FILESTREAM implementation. Discuss most common a table design mistakes. Find out efficiency of one type over another, IDENTITY vs. SEQUENCE vs. GUID to support PK uniqueness, pros and cons of using composite Primary Key and SPARSE column, and more.

We are going to examine a variety of oopsies MANY developers fall prey too - some obvious, some pretty subtle and some down right sneaky! Lots of code examples with the bad AND good code presented. I GUARANTEE that you will find things here that will either prevent you from getting bad data, throwing unwanted errors or vastly improving your database application's performance. I have given this talk over SEVENTY times now and it is always very highly rated!

The deployment process is frustrating; an object is missing, an object is deployed in the wrong order or an incorrect version. Deploying to multiple environments like Dev, QA, UAT and Prod is a challenge whither on premise or in the cloud. Source controlling database objects is paramount. Team development is required. Database code will only be deployed when changed. Proper security deployment will be repeatable per environment. Together, let us discover how using Database Project will help us with consistent releases. Deployments can cause you trouble but we will share a reliable deployment and version control process. Let’s see how Database Project can help us accomplish this goal.

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Learn about data masking and encryption, the pros and cons of each, as well as when to use which.

DAX is the new formula language (builds upon Excel's) supporting PowerPivot and Analysis Services Tabular mode. If you know Excel, you already know the basics of DAX (without even knowing it). PowerBI also uses DAX for all the formula expressions. We'll cover the basics of DAX, and go over some time intelligence functions.

You've decided to start using Biml to make your integration services packages. Congratulations! Now, you're looking at data sources other than SQL Server. How do you automate package development for these flat files, Excel Files, and other databases? In this session, I'll share some of the techniques I've used to deal with these second-class sources. I'll be walking you through C# code. Don't worry, I'm not a real programmer, so the code isn't the most complex, but it does solve the need.

Extracting, transforming and loading data has become a major component to satisfying business requirements and needs. Depending on the size of the data you are working with, the way you design your SSIS packages can have an impact on performance and run times. In this session, we will cover a variety of incremental design approaches centered around large data sets using SSIS. We will look at the pros and cons of each ETL strategy and generate specific use cases to decide which strategy yields optimal results.

So you have successfully configured Availability Groups, now what? In this session we will look beyond setup and look at how to monitor your Availability Groups. We will discuss what metrics to look at, what they mean, and what you need to alert on. You will walk away from this session with tools you need to monitor your environment and know how to respond to alerts. This session is for anyone that uses, or plans to use Availability Groups. You should come in with a basic understanding of Availability Groups to get the most out of this session.

In the last two decades Thomas always had more open positions than I could fill, not because of lack of applicants, I must have interviewed close to 300 people for DBA, database developer, data architect, data modeling and other data related positions. Come to this highly interactive session to learn why 99% of the candidates failed the simplest questions and disqualified them self. Thomas will share what he misses in resumes and how to respond to questions better.

Are your statistics up to date? Yes, it’s that dreaded phrase you hear all the time when it comes to performance tuning your SQL Server. What does it matter? Why should I care about statistics? Aren’t they automatic or something like that? In this session we will go over why statistics matter, how they are generated, how they impact performance, and even how to maintain them. Once we have that all settled, we will take a quick look at how the cardinality estimator uses statistics to determine a ‘good enough’ plan to use. We will close out the session by taking a look at the performance impact from a simple upgrade of your SQL Server to 2014 and using the new cardinality estimator.

When people talk about Power BI, it can be all sizzle and no steak. Instead, we are going to take a slightly deeper dive into the inner workings of PowerBI. We will cover the different components of the Power BI ecosystem: PowerQuery, DAX, Power BI visuals, Data gateways, and the Power BI service. Instead of just showing off pretty graphs, we will focus on a more fundamental understanding of these tools.

Taking a looking at all the new features of SSAS 2016 Tabular, how to use them effectively and avoid pitfalls. Features include Bi-Directional Cross Filtering, Parallel Partition Processing, Calculated Tables, etc.

Azure Machine Learning enables far more than supervised 2-class classifications and continuous value predictions. Azure ML clusters unsupervised data. Azure ML analyzes free form text for entity recognition, sentiment analysis, or topic detection. Azure ML even provides Jupyter Notebooks with fully functional R and Python environments. This sessions demonstrates some of these capabilities to help you solve some of your business problem.

If you just click next-next-next and think you have a good-to-go SQL Server THINK AGAIN!! :-) There are umpteen things you just GOTTA change right out of the box if you want your potentially very expensive and always precious SQL Server resource to perform and behave optimally. This session will cover a laundry list from High Power Setting to data file growth and many useful items in between.

Women make up over half of the workforce, and yet there are still discrepancies in pay and in the number of women in certain industries. Technology is one of the industries where women are drastically underrepresented. What factors in industry and society have contributed to these outcomes? In this session, we will discuss the effects of trends in industry such as college graduation of women in technology fields, and women currently in tech or in positions of leadership. And, even important to us, how the contributions of women in PASS affect our community. This will be an open discussion with input from the audience encouraged.

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I was an employee of a company that had an office in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Prior to that infamous date, I had written several departmental documents that ended up being critical to our recovery. In this presentation, I provide a narrative of what happened in the weeks following 9/11, and how documentation played a role in getting the organization back on its feet. While other disaster recovery presentations talk about strategies, plans, and techniques, this presentation focuses on the documentation itself. We will discuss the documents we had and how they were used in our recovery. We will also discuss what documents we didn't have, and how they could have made the process better.