Category Archives: Conferences

#SQLPASS #Summit14 Day 1 Keynote Highlights !

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PASS President Thomas LaRock on stage !

PASS President Thomas LaRock kicked off the summit keynote.

 

Tom talked about the history of PASS and its growth curve. Positive numbers all over the place !

One of the key things to note is that PASS has delivered 1.3 million hours of training which is pretty impressive.

 

 

Next up was Microsoft Corp Vice President TK Ranga Rengarajan talking about Evolving Microsoft Data Platform.

Ranga talked about the explosion of data/data sources and its positive trend.He stressed on the evolving Data culture and how data professionals can lead this change.Microsoft data platform is capable enough to manage all the data requirements.

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Ranga Rengarajan on stage !

Goal is do more,achieve more via :

Capture Diverse Data

AzureDocDB, AzureHD Insight, Analytics Platform System, Azure Search.

There was a demo by Pier1 Imports on Azure Search, and the demo explained the value of Azure Search capabilities
and its power.

Pier 1 gave another demo of their Promotions app/page which uses AzureDoc DB.

They also achieve scaling using SQLDatabase sharding capabilities.

Pier 1 is also leveraging Geo Replication for its premium SQLAzure Database.

Achieve Elastic Scale

SQL2014 with Win 2012 R2, SQLServer in Azure VM’s, Azure SQLDatabase.

Max Performance

Azure SQLDatabase, SQL2014.

Simplify with Cloud

Hybrid scenarios with SQL2014, Azure as a data lake.

Ranga also talked about various businesses which are leveraging SQLServer to achieve their data/scaling requirements.

Some great numbers for SQLServer this year :

1.2 Million downloads of SQL2014. 1M Azure SQL DB’s deployed.

Major Announcements :

Azure SQL Database Major update : Leap in TSQL compatibility, Larger index handling, Parallel queries, Extended events, In memory Col Store.

Technology Sneak Peak : Pier1 Imports

Pier1 Demo was focused on In memory OLTP/ Col store on Azure SQLDatabase. 13,000 transactions/second were fired up and at the same time a reporting workload was ran and performance was awesome .

They also demonstrated the ability to stretch On Premises database to the cloud.

Next up was Joseph Sirosh, Microsoft CVP Machine Learning & Information Management.

Joseph talked about Azure Machine learning and other capabilities.

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Joseph making sure the crowd is engaged !

 

Again the goal is Do more,achieve more, Put data to work  :

Understand the past
Azure Data Factory

Demo from Pier1 demo on trend/stream analysis using Kinect/Azure Data Factory. Data from Kinect sensors are streamed
to azure and data is analyzed real-time.

Analyze the present
Azure Stream Analytics

Predict whats next
Azure Machine Learning

Demo by Pier1 Imports on machine learning. Pier1 app allows customer to login to the app and the customers
shopping trend/taste data is checked from Azure and results are shown.

Next up was James Phillips , Microsoft GM Data Experiences

James talked about bringing insights to more people – faster.

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James talking about Power BI and Machine Learning !

 

Goal again is Do more ,achieve more :

Simplify data discovery 
     
Deliver faster time to insight
PowerBI,QA

Connect to on-premises
Data Refresh, Interactive Query

Enable data culture
Live Dashboards, Drill through

James gave a cool demo of PowerBI Dashboard.

Thanks for reading and keep watching this space for more !

My 1st SQL in the City Experience !

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I attended my 1st #SQLinthecity event hosted by RedGate yesterday. This is one of those events which I wanted to attend for a long time, and I’m glad I could make it this year.

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Attendees registering for the event

This whole day event was packed with some cool sessions, and I was able learn something new from each and every session I attended. Yay,  win !

High quality training delivered by RedGate and its all free ! Yes, you heard that correct.

It was a busy day for me and attending back to back sessions are always fun. Here is a list of all the sessions I attended and a short description on what I liked in each session:

 

1st session :  You did what to my transaction log?  

Speaker : Gail Shaw/Tony Davis.

This was a fun session where Gail Shaw and Tony Davis demonstrated what all possible wrong things people do to their transaction log when it’s full.

This session reminds us that Google/Bing is good, but it contains lot of bad info too!

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Gail and Tony talking about transaction log mistakes!

 

What I liked about this session:

It was interactive and had some demos in it. Interactive sessions are always welcome, and that’s the way to go.

Both Tony and Gail did a good job and there was never a dull moment during the whole 1 hr window.

 

 

2nd session : 101 stupid things your colleagues do when setting up SQLServer.

Speaker : Matt Slocum

I should say Matt did a great job in this talk. This was a quick session on what should be the right way of setting up SQLServer. What is recommended vs What’s not.

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Matt talking about SQLServer setup mistakes !

 

What I liked about this session :

Solid content, Ability to answer to the point etc.

 

 

 

 

3rd session : SQLServer 2014 new features.

Speaker : Kevin Boles

Title name is self-explanatory, and this session was all about the new features in SQL2014. Kevin Boles did a good job here and he ensured that there was never dull moment in this session.

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What I liked about this session :

Good content and Kevin talked about lot of features which are kind of hidden within SQL2014, and I like it.

 

 

 

4th session : SQLServer tips and tricks.

Speaker : Ike Ellis

The abstract for this session was interesting and it was like : ” This is a presentation for the YouTube generation. Come discover a series of 20 tips on a wide variety of topics.

What I liked about this session :

I really had a good time attending this session and learned lot of new tips and tricks. Ike did a good job and the session was very interactive. Each tip (Wide variety of topics : Includes SSMS,Profiler, SSRS etc) was explained within 3-5 minutes and demos were nice.

Conclusion :

I should really appreciate RedGate for what they are doing for the SQLServer Community/Family.Events like these are classic examples that they care for their product and us.

Thanks for reading, and keep watching this space for more.