SQL Saturday #104: Colorado Springs

January 8th, 2012 will be the first SQL Saturday for 2012. 104 SQL Saturdays is an amazing number for our community. I will be presenting on Dimensional Modeling based on the Kimball books. Database design and the planning for them has been a necessary start for successful projects.

I selected Colorado Springs because I have not been skiing in 3 years. My girlfriend and I will be skiing on Friday before the event. There is a planned skiing trip for Sunday with the event, but we have to get back work on Monday. She will be visiting a friend while I am attending/speaking at this great event.

There are 3 Pre Cons on tap for Friday, which is well worth the $100 for a day of training from MVPs and SQL Server experts. I would be at one if not for skiing.

1. "Scaling SQL Server" (Glenn Berry)
2. "Data Warehouse Dimensional Design and Architecture Planning" (Erik Veerman)
3. "What's In Your Utility Belt?" (Chris Shaw and TJay Belt)

The Saturday schedule is pack full of great sessions. I will probably will go over my presentation first thing in the morning in the Speaker room, then I am up at the second BI session of the day at 9:30AM. Next, I will stay in the BI room and watch Doug Lane with some report service info.

The other tracks have sessions from MVPs Tim Ford, Grant Fritchey and Jason Strate, all great and knowledgable speakers. There is also Thomas LaRock, Karen Lopez and William Pearson. It is amazing to be around these people in the SQL community willing to speak at these Free Saturdays. Joe Sack will be there from SQLSkills and Colorado local Carlos Bossy and Austin man Jim Murphy have some SQL Server 2012 sessions.

I will probably hang out in the BI track, wondering over to DBA sessions and enjoying the lunch. It sounds like there will a great Friday night speaker/sponsor event that is great for networking and thanking the sponsor.

If you live around Colorado Springs, come hang out with some SQL Server geeks getting some SQL learning on!!!

God Bless, Thomas

PASS Data Architecture VC: Jeremy Huppatz - Row Versioned Data Warehouses

Subject: Row Versioned Data Warehouses

Level: 200-300 (Intermediate)

Start Time: Thursday, December 15th, 2011 8:00 PM US Central Time

Presenter: Jeremy Huppatz (Blog|@OzzieMedes)

Live Meeting Link:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/UserGroups/join?id=B77TSH&role=attend&pw=dGC-%3B88%275

Row Versioned Data Warehouses
Jeremy will discuss the strengths and disadvantages of a row-versioned data warehouse design in the context of a real world case study, sharing lessons learnt and demonstrating some of the technologies and techniques used to build a row-versioned data warehouse. He will discuss row-versioning in the context of Kimball slowly-changing dimensions, and will also provide some details on the relative strengths of row-versioning as applied to measure information in situations where such data cannot be considered finalized at the time it is loaded into the warehouse.

Jeremy Huppatz
Jeremy has been a SQL Server data guy going back as far as 1997. During his 14 years working with Microsoft’s flagship database, he has filled the roles of DBA, data modeller, database designer, data analyst, BI developer and data architect in a multitude of projects, which have included departmental database apps, enterprise data warehouses and a bit of just about everything in between. Jeremy now runs his own IT consulting firm called Solitaire Systems and lives in the scenic Adelaide Hills with his partner Alison and her cat. He also plays, writes and records music and writes in his spare time, and has been described optimistically as an avid (as opposed to obsessive) computer gamer.

DataArch.SQLPass.org

The PASS Data Architecture Virtual Chapter will focus on data architecture concerns as they impact users, developers and DBAs on the Microsoft SQL Server platform. We want to make data architecture accessible to all data practitioners, and drive the point home that Data Architecture is a set of practices and a body of knowledge that overlaps almost all database professionals to some degree.