It's the end of the financial year for most companies and we've had two companies in the last week approach us about pre-paying for 2012 classes to use up 2011 budget.

We've put together an offer that will run from now through the end of April (to entice you to spend 2012 budget early too!) where you can pre-pay six class seats for the price of five at the early-bird price (i.e. $14,975 - saving $2,995).

Here's how it works:

• You go to our registration page and select 'Pre-paid 6 seats for the price of 5 for 2012 classes'. You can pay using any of our methods - and we can also invoice a PO if you want.
• The six seats MUST be used for classes in 2012 in the US (we can discuss the UK classes over email - it's more complicated).
• The seats can be used in any combination of US classes and do not have to be in the same class or the same person.
• It covers the class fees but does NOT register anyone automatically. Class attendees need to register for the desired class ASAP to secure their seats, as seats are only available in a class until the class is sold out.
• The process to register for a class using a pre-paid seat is to select the 'Check/Wire Transfer/Prepaid Block' payment option for the desired class, use the discount code 'prepaid', and complete registration. We will take care of matching registrations to the pre-paid block.
• This does NOT cover travel and hotel expenses.

Here are the US classes to choose from in 2012:

• IE1: Feb 27 – Mar 2, 2012: Internals and Performance in Tampa, FL
• IE2: Mar 5-9, 2012: Performance Tuning in Tampa, FL
• IE3: Mar 12-16, 2012: High Availability/Disaster Recovery in Tampa, FL
• IE1: Apr 16-20, 2012: Internals and Performance in Chicago, IL
• IEBI: Apr 16-20, 2012: Business Intelligence in Chicago, IL
• IE2: Apr 23-27, 2012: Performance Tuning in Chicago, IL
• IED: Apr 23-27, 2012: Developer Immersion in Chicago, IL
• IE1: Aug 6-10, 2012*: Internals and Performance in Bellevue, WA
• IE2: Aug 13-17, 2012*: Performance Tuning in Bellevue, WA
• IED: Aug 13-17, 2012*: Developer Immersion in Bellevue, WA
• IE3: Aug 20-24, 2012*: High Availability/Disaster Recovery in Bellevue, WA
• IEBI: Aug 20-24, 2012*: Business Intelligence in Bellevue, WA
• IE4: Aug 27-31, 2012*: Development Support (Security/Powershell/Opt Proc) in Bellevue, WA
• IE1: Oct/Nov** – In Houston, TX and/or possibly Newark, NJ
• IE2: Oct/Nov** – In Houston, TX and/or possibly Newark, NJ
• * - these classes are confirmed with hotel contracts signed and will open for registration at the start of February 2012
• ** - these classes are not confirmed and the dates/locations may change.

Hopefully this will work for some of you and allow you not to lose that precious budget!

We're continuing to add to our 2012 class roster (see the Tampa classes in February/March) and we're coming back to Chicago by popular demand in Spring 2012! We're teaching our first two 5-day Immersion Events back-to-back in Chicago plus we're co-locating our Immersion Event on Business Intelligence along with week 1, and our Immersion Event for Developers along with week 2.

We don't allow anyone else to license and teach our material so you're guaranteed the best instruction possible - unbeatable ROI for your training budget!

All classes are 5 days from 8.30 to 5.30 and include catered breakfast and lunch every day. The early bird price for each class is US$2,995.

We hope to see you there!

Here are the details:

Chicago, IL, April 16-20, 2012

IE1: Immersion Event on Internals and Performance

• Data Storage Internals, Designing for Performance, and Indexing for Performance 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp
• Full details and registration link HERE

IEBI: Immersion Event on Business Intelligence 

• BI Overview, Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services and more
• Instructors: Stacia Misner 
• Full details and registration link HERE

Chicago, IL, April 23-27, 2012

IE2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning

• IO Subsystems, Workload Analysis, and Performance Tuning Methodologies 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Joe Sack
• Full details and registration link HERE

IE1: Immersion Event on Internals and Performance

• Using T-SQL, CLR, Transactions, Optimizing Procedural Code, XML and more
• Instructors: Bob Beauchemin 
• Full details and registration link HERE

We've started to confirm our 2012 classes, and we're coming to the south-east of the US by popular demand in Spring 2012! We're teaching three 5-day classes back-to-back in Tampa, FL so not only can you get your learning on, you can also escape the winter weather and get your shorts and sunglasses on too!

We don't allow anyone else to license and teach our material so you're guaranteed the best instruction possible - unbeatable ROI for your training budget!

All classes are 5 days from 8.30 to 5.30 and include catered breakfast and lunch every day. The early bird price for each class is US$2,995.

We hope to see you there!

Here are the details:

Tampa, FL, February 27-March 2, 2012

IE1: Immersion Event on Internals and Performance

• Data Storage Internals, Designing for Performance, and Indexing for Performance 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp
• Full details and registration link HERE

Tampa, FL, March 5-9, 2012

IE2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning

• IO Subsystems, Workload Analysis, and Performance Tuning Methodologies 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Joe Sack
• Full details and registration link HERE

Tampa, FL, March 12-16, 2012

IE3: Immersion Event on High Availability and Disaster Recovery

• HA/DR strategy, replication, clustering, mirroring, virtualization, consolidation, corruption 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Joe Sack
• Full details and registration link HERE

We've just finalized our Fall line-up of classes, and we're very excited to introduce two new classes on development and business intelligence. This means SQLskills.com now covers the full spectrum of SQL Server technologies with master-level classes taught by five of the most highly-respected and deeply-qualified instructors in the world. We don't allow anyone else to license and teach our material so you're guaranteed the best instruction possible - unbeatable ROI for your training budget!

All classes are 5 days from 8.30 to 5.30 and include catered breakfast and lunch every day. The early bird price for each class is US$2,995.

We hope to see you there!

Here are the details:

Chicago, IL, October 24-28, 2011

IE2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning

• IO Subsystems, Workload Analysis, and Performance Tuning Methodologies 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias
• SOLD OUT! 

IED: Immersion Event for Developers

• Using T-SQL, CLR, Transactions, Optimizing Procedural Code, XML and more 
• Instructor: Bob Beauchemin
• Full details and registration link HERE

Atlanta, GA, December 5-9, 2011

IE2: Immersion Event on Internals and Performance

• Data Storage Internals, Designing for Performance, and Indexing for Performance 
• Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp
• Full details and registration link HERE

IEBI: Immersion Event on Business Intelligence

• BI Overview, Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services and more 
• Instructor: Stacia Misner
• Full details and registration link HERE

The Immersion Event on Internals and Performance in London, UK from 20-24 June, 2011 is now open for public registration!

It's been open to SQLskills Insiders for the past two weeks, with an exclusive discount offer, and is 1/3 full already.

Check out the details HERE. The hotel discount link will be sent to all registered attendees as soon as it is available.

Hope to see you there!

A few weeks ago Kimberly did a blog post survey about which city in the US you'd like to see us come to with our next Immersion Event and there were two that stood out: Chicago, IL and Tampa, FL. We looked into the logistics of putting on an event at each location and we ended up selecting Chicago for a variety of reasons. One is certainly that it is centrally located but the real clincher is that we got a phenomenal nightly hotel rate for those of you that do have to travel. Our nightly rate is only $99 per night and it includes internet access. The hotel has free parking and it’s relatively easy to get to for all of the local folks.

Dates: Monday, 2^nd May through Friday, 6^th May 2011

Course: SQLskills Immersion Event on Internals and Performance (full class abstract)

Venue: Hilton Suites Chicago/Oak Brook

For full details and registration, click HERE.

Don't dip your toe – immerse yourself!

(Want some background info?

Continuing our musical theme this week is the The Clash with their classic '79 album London Calling...

Which incidentally, is what's been happening to us over the last month as so many of you have asked us to bring our Immersion Events to the UK for the first time ever.

Well, we've answered your call and Kimberly just booked our airline tickets so we can be in London to present our first European Immersion Event of the year!

June 20th to 25th we'll present our Immersion Event on Internals and Performance in the London area. We're still deciding which hotel to use for the event, but it will be somewhere within 15 miles of Heathrow Airport.

We anticipate opening the class for public registration around the end of March, but we'll open up registration two weeks prior to members of the SQLskills community, with an extra exclusive incentive to sign up :-)

As the first line of the title track from the album says: "London calling to the faraway towns..."

Hope to see you there!

Paul and Kimberly

PS We're heading out the door now to fly to Dallas for our first Immersion Event of the year - it's a full house with some great folks and we're *really* looking forward to it!

I've been a big fan of Genesis since as long as I can remember, and I especially like their 1986 album Invisible Touch with the cool song Land of Confusion.

Over the last couple of months we've led you into the Land of Confusion. We revamped and expanded our training classes late last year and changed the name of them from SQL Immersion to Master Immersion, to reflect the fact that the classes will help anyone studying for the MCM certification.

Unfortunately that gave many of you the impression that the classes are *only* for those people, and that the Immersion events you know and love had disappeared.

We've dropped the word 'Master' from the class names. Our classes are the same as they were last year, except we have a *lot* more content now, which is why we've got four separate classes instead of one class where we try to jam everything in to one week.

Our classes are suitable for everyone from involuntary DBAs to developers to architects to seasoned DBAs.

If you're an involuntary DBA you'll need to do quite a bit of pre-reading, but you'll walk away from our class with the best grounding you can get to help you become a DBA, with clear (and correct!) explanations of how SQL Server works and *why* it behaves the way it does. A lot of the 400-level information may be a stretch right now, but will be invaluable as you progress in your DBA career. We'll fire up your enthusiasm for getting stuck into SQL Server like no-one else can!

If you're a developer you'll walk away from our class with a new-found respect for your DBAs and the ability to write scalable code the first time. You'll understand why you need to test your code against a production volume of data. You'll understand why you need the right nonclustered indexes to get good performance. You'll understand so many of the things that your DBA keeps telling you. We'll show you how to be the SQL developer rock star in your group!

If you're an architect you'll walk away from our class armed with the knowledge to make informed design decisions. You'll understand the ramifications of data type choices. You'll understand some the design anti-patterns we see time and time again. We'll show you how to gain the respect of your developers and DBAs by showing you understand the systems they deal with day in and day out!

If you're a seasoned DBA you'll walk away from our class feeling refreshed and reinvigorated. We'll help you unlearn all the old behaviors of SQL Server and learn the new ones. We'll debunk all the myths and misconceptions you've heard over the years. We'll show you all the new tools, tips and tricks that can make your life so much easier. We're going to put the spring back into your step and make you want to get up and go to work every day to play with SQL Server!

Our internals and performance class in Dallas next week only has 2 seats left, but we have more classes on the books, including a performance tuning class in Dallas in March. We're about to announce a class in London in June, and we're choosing the city for another US class (likely in May).

Stay tuned for details. If you want advance notice of these classes, along with exclusive discount codes to help you sell the class to your boss, join our community - and leave the Land of Confusion behind.

It's all very well hearing about how cool our training classes our from *us*, but what do attendees like you think?

I recently did an email interview with Kyle Hayes, a member of the Production DBA Team for Bridgepoint Education. He attended our Immersion Event back in August 2010 in Bellevue, WA.

Here's what Kyle had to say (verbatim with no formatting or other changes):

What attracted you to the training in the first place?

What attracted me to the training was an intense desire to increase my overall knowledge of SQL Server, particularly the area of Query Optimization.  As a new DBA (at the time) and a former Developer my Boss thought it would be beneficial for me to attend.

Now that you're back, does your boss think it was worth sending you to training?

My Boss (who also attended) absolutely thinks it was worth attending.  As I said before, he thought it was very important to help ramp up my skills and comfort level as a DBA and he told me on more than one occasion leading up to the Event, “Kimberly & Paul are two of the best in the world”.

Have there been any moments where you've said, "Ah, I know the answer from training!"

There have been several things that that I have recalled from the training that have been instrumental in helping me solve an issue.  Or at least getting started in the right direction towards resolution.

Do you ever look back at the notes you took during training?

I do refer back to my notes from time to time.  There was so much covered and I would really like to say (one day) that I fully comprehend all of the material.

Which parts of the training have helped you the most since you attended?

The part(s) of the training I found most helpful were Index Maintenance & Logging And Recovery.

What was the biggest surprise about the training?

The biggest surprise for me was how much I got from the experience.  As a new DBA, I was worried I would be ‘lost’ by all of the information.  Not only did learn some new skills, I came away feeling more confident as a DBA, actually looking forward to attacking my daily challenges with broader, sharper Sword and a sense of ‘calm’.  Like Paul had told us on Day 1, Rule no. 1:  “Do NOT panic.”

How was the training different from other training sessions you've attended?

Not really applicable as this was my first.  But I am so glad that it was.  The setting was intimate and Paul & Kimberly were so accommodating and helpful.   

What would you tell other DBAs and developers about this class?

What I would tell others, simply… “GO!  Do not miss this Event.  It’s informative & fun.” 

Thanks Kyle!

We're really excited about the classes we've got coming up and to say 'thank you' to the SQL community for all your support of SQLskills.com over the years, we're running a competition.

The contest is now closed.

The Prize

The prize is a free seat in our class in our 5-day Internals and Performance class in Dallas, February 21-25. If you win the competition, you pay US$0 instead of the $2,995 early-bird price or $3,495 full price. You'll be responsible for all travel expenses and your hotel bill. The class includes catered breakfast, catered lunch, bottom-less tea and coffee and tons of juicy content :-)

There may also be runner-up prizes...

The Challenge

All you have to do is write a blog post explaining why you want to come to a class taught by us and why you'd make the best use of the knowledge you'll get from being in the class. We'll pick what we consider to be the best entry.

The Rules

• Your blog post must go live before 11.59pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
• Your blog post must contain a link to the class details: http://www.sqlskills.com/Dallas-20110221.asp
• You must post a comment on this blog post that links to yours
• If you're on Twitter, you must tweet your blog post using the #sqlskills hash tag
• If you win, you will be able to register for the class at the special price of US$0
• If you win, you will be responsible for all travel and hotel costs for attending the class
• If you enter the competition and you win a prize, we will include your name in a blog post announcing the lucky winners
• If you are a runner-up, you may win an unspecified prize...

The Summary 

We'll announce the lucky winner on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011.

Good luck and we hope to see you there!

The final set of MCM training videos we recorded for Microsoft have been posted on TechNet and are available for download.

For your convenience, I've created a page that lists all the videos, with links, grouped together to match the training classes we provide.

These videos are designed to give you an idea of the breadth of knowledge required for the certification, but they're also great primers for our classes. The material covered in the videos will be covered during the classes, but in much more depth, with a lot more additional material, and with different demos.

Check out the videos HERE.

Enjoy!

PS Some people have asked for the demo scripts from the videos - these will be blogged by us through the year.

After a lot of fine-tuning, we've come up with a comprehensive training curriculum to satisfy those looking for comprehensive SQL Server training.

We've designed four week-long classes that cover everything we think you need to know:

• Immersion Event on Internals and Performance (5 days)
  • Data Storage Internals, Designing for Performance, and Indexing for Performance
  • Instructors: Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp

• Immersion Event on Performance Tuning (5 days)
  • IO Subsystems, Workload Analysis, and Performance Tuning Methodologies
  • Instructors: Brent Ozar, Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp

• Immersion Event on High Availability and Disaster Recovery (4 days)
  • Virtualization, Consolidation, High Availability, and Disaster Recovery
  • Instructors: Brent Ozar, Paul S. Randal, Kimberly L. Tripp

• Immersion Event on Security and Development Support (5 days)
  • Database Security, Development Best Practices and Optimizing Procedural Code
  • Instructor: Bob Beauchemin

We're going to offer them in multiple cities around the US through the year and once each in London, UK. Additional classes will be scheduled based on demand.

For full details about this training, including in-depth curriculums for each class, along with the locations, schedules, and costs, see HERE.

For a list of all the free online training videos we've produced in conjunction with Microsoft, see HERE.

For a list of pre-reading study aids and materials, see HERE.

If you have any questions about anything to do with our training classes, please send me email.

Thanks!

A few people have asked over the last few days how Kimberly and I have SSMS set up for presenting so I thought I'd do a quick blog post explaining what we do.

The first thing is to go download ZoomIt so that you can zoom in the screen and people can see the details. Don't present without it.

All the things I'm going to show you are accessed by going to Tools -> Options.

First thing you need to do is change the fonts so they're readable on the big screen.

Change the font to something fixed-width and bump the font-size up. Also change the way that highlighted text looks so it's really clear what you're highlighting. Line numbers are also good to have on - do that in Text Editor->All Languages. Then go to where it says "Show settings for:" and change the font size for Grid Results and Test Results too.

Next thing to do is change the way query results are displayed, both for Results to Grid and Results to Text.

When you're displaying at 1024x768, there isn't space on screen to show the query window and the results window and have people make sense of it. You need to change things so the results are displayed in a separate tab, and SSMS switches to that tab when the query finishes.

Most of these are common sense, but here's an expert tip for you: include the query in the result set. This means that if you're interrupted during a demo by questions, and you've unhighlighted the T-SQL you ran in the query window, you can flip to the results tab and see what you just executed. This is *really* important for demos where code has to be run in the correct order.

And that's it - happy presenting!

PS My good friend Buck Woody also posted about this today - see his post here.

PPS Bill Ramos posted a comment about turning on word wrap too - good advice. I actually write all my demo scripts with a hard CR+LF at the 1024x768 screen size cut-off in case I'm ever using a system that isn't set up the way I like it.

Time is running out to sign up for our BI class in Bellevue, WA in a couple of weeks... there are some spots left so make sure one of them goes to you!

Check out our Immersion Event page for details - hope to see you there!

PS Next week I'll have time to put out a techie post - I promise.

It's official! We're doing another 5-day SQL Immersion Event (our ever-popular SQL Server master-class) this year in the US!

Through popular demand we've decided to put on a class in San Diego, CA this time - the climate is *much* better than Seattle in December!

The class will follow our regular 5-day format with our best content covering:

• On-disk structures: how the data is stored
• Index internals: how the data is organized
• Logging and recovery: how the data is protected
• Choosing the RIGHT Data Type
• Table & Index Partitioning Strategies
• Data Access
• Indexing Strategies
• Data and log file provisioning and management
• Tempdb
• Index and statistics maintenance
• Using backup and restore (plus internals)
• Consistency checking and disaster recovery

The event will be held in the Marriott Courtyard San Diego Old Town and will be fully catered - and there's a special room rate of $139/night.

The full cost is US$3200 with an early-bird special of US$2600 for registrations before midnight PST November 5th.

Check out the Immersion Event page for full details, registration, and feedback from attendees of our earlier events this year (or jump straight to registration).

We hope to see you there!

PS Don't forget the BI Immersion Event in Bellevue, WA in October - see here for details!

It's official! We're putting on a 5-day BI Immersion Event this year in the US!

We've just confirmed with our well-known BI expert, Stacia Misner, who will be teaching the class. Stacia teaches all the Microsoft internal BI classes and we're looking forward to sitting in on the class to learn from her too. Check out her bio here.

Even with little to no knowledge of BI, this course will provide you with immediately-usable, production-level knowledge of BI. The course has been designed to take you from installation to configuration to application and integration – for all facets of the BI stack (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, PowerPivot, and SharePoint) - it is meant for anyone who wants to get involved in BI. Our first thought was to create a class for DBAs who want to better understand their environment, but the course content is just as valuable whether you’re new to BI or ready to expand your skills. This class might be the perfect way to advance your career and dig deeper into topics that don’t typically get covered in most BI classes.

Maybe you accomplish quite a bit with Excel - but how do you get the data there? Quite a few folks use cut-and-paste, or import from a CSV - but of course there's a much better, and much more scalable and robust way using SSIS! Relational data warehousing – with lots of aggregate tables – helps you keep your data organized for Excel or any other type of reporting or analysis tool that you might want to use, but some types of business questions are answered more easily when you move your data from the data warehouse into SSAS cubes. Whether you store data in tables or cubes, you have a variety of options in the BI stack to access and analyze the data, but which is best? Learn how to choose the right tool for the task and how to manage a secure and scalable environment for reporting and analysis.

The course starts out in the 100-200 range on Day 1 but moves into the 200-300 range for the remainder of the week. For each technology in the BI stack, you’ll learn basic usage and design principles, followed by more coverage of configuration, performance tuning, and other management tasks than you’ll find in most BI end-to-end classes. The course will not only bridge the gap in your BI knowledge, but will continue on to take you a lot further. If you’ve always wanted to immerse yourself into BI, figure out the end-to-end story, and go behind-the-scenes to learn how to install, configure, and deploy BI solutions, this is the place to be!

The class will follow our regular 5-day format with Stacia's best content covering:

• What is Business Intelligence?
• Building a Business Intelligence Infrastructure
• Relational Data Warehousing
• Integration Services
• SSIS Package Reliability and Performance
• Managing SSIS in Production
• Analysis Services
• Designing Aggregations
• Using MDX to Enhance a Cube
• Managing SSAS in Production
• Reporting Services
• Developing Reports
• Managing SSRS in Production
• Excel and PowerPivot for Excel
• SharePoint 2010
• PerformancePoint Services
• PowerPivot forSharePoint

The event will be held in the Marriott Courtyard Bellevue Downtown and will be fully catered - there's a special room rate of $159/night.

The full cost is US$3200 with an early-bird special of US$2600 for registrations before midnight PST September 17th.

Check out the Immersion Event page for full details, registration, and feedback from attendees of our other events (or jump straight to registration).

We hope to see you there!

We've got two more classes on the books now for 2010 - a 5-day BI class in Bellevue, WA the week of October 25th, and a 5-day SQL Immersion class in San Diego, CA the week of December 6th. Watch the blogs for announcements for when registration goes live.

In the meantime, here a some comments from those who attended our 5-day Immersion Event  last week.

"Best class I have been to!" - Julie Finnell

"Best training I ever attended in the last 9 years. The course is very well planned and executed. Excellent Job!! Will come back next year."

"This was the best course I've EVER attended. I could list the features that distinguish this course from the others, but I won't. The least of which, however, is not the mentors. You both were just fabulous." - Nick Loghides.

"I really loved the way you both indulged our questions. Great demos!" - Nick Loghides.

"When my boss first asked me why this class of the other, I told him that I wanted to go to the source. As for the class, immersion is definitely the best way to describe the overall content and presentation. There is so much content, but it is presented in a way that you won't drown. Every question is answered considerately and concisely; whether it's a complex question that needs to be answered at breaks or something that can be answered quickly. Overall, I can't say enough about the class and would recommend it to anyone who wants to know how SQL Server works." - Kevin Eckart

"A lot of great material! As a newbie, there is a lot of stuff I can use immediately, and also a lot for fuure consideration. Really gave me a good understanding of some of the internals and a new way to look at our systems." - Tim Magney

"Overall, excellent course!! Thank you! I've learned new tips and techniques that will save me time and my company money." - Ed Quick

"Overall, I think anyone who works professionally with SQL Server should come to this training, even if they have to pay for it themselves." - Eric Maibach

"This was the *BEST* training event I've ever attended! Thank you for a fantastic experience!" - Rowland Gosling

"The level of knowledge you have and impart was invaluable to making this class totally worth my time! Thanks." - Chris Swartley

"This was an incredible week and I can't wait to get back to work and start implementing what I've learned." - George

"Top tactics one-and-all. I'm excited. And love my job more!! Thank you!" - Kyle

Thanks everyone - it was a pleasure teaching you!

One of the places I really look forward to going every year is Dublin - not just for the countryside, friendly people, and our very good friends Carmel, Sandra, and Bob of Prodata, but also for the fabulous Irish breakfasts that the hotel serves - nowhere beats it, not even Scotland!

And now that time is almost upon us again! This will be the third year we've taught classes in Ireland and this year we're doing a lot more than before:

4-Day Immersion Event, June 28-July 1 2010: See this site for full details, registration links and options.
2-Day Performance Tuning Masterclass, July 5-6 2010: See the this site for full details, registration links and options.
2-Day Disaster Recovery Masterclass, July 7-8 2010: See the this site for full details, registration links and options.

Next Wednesday, June 9th, I'll be presenting at the monthly meeting of the PASS DBA virtual chapter.

The Live Meeting starts at 11am PST and lasts for an hour (hopefully I can try to speak for that short a length of time :-)

Title: Building the Right Backup Strategy

Abstract: In many situations, database backups are critical for recovering from a disaster, but there are lots of misconceptions about how backups work and what a good backup strategy is. The purpose of taking backups is, of course, to be able to restore them at some point - but that can sometimes be easier said than done, depending on what you want to be able to restore. In this in-depth session, Paul will explain how the three most common types of backups work and how they can be combined into an effective backup strategy. Paul will also cover how restore works, the three recovery options for restoring a backup, and some useful examples. You don't want to find out that your backups are unusable when disaster strikes - this session provides the knowledge you need to make sure you can recover. (Paul recommends that you read through the "Understanding Logging and Recovery in SQL Server" Technet Magazine article - February 2009 before watching this talk.)

This is going to be a fast-paced talk - maybe you'll want to play it back at 1/2 speed later :-) 

The attendee URL is https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join?id=98S527&role=attend.

There will be a door prize for registered attendees (a $50 Amazon voucher) and you must be registered via https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=7j42r4k0528mb2s3 no later than 5pm EST on June 8th to be eligible for the prize.

Hope you can join me!

PS Don't forget to checkout the various classes coming up in London, Dublin, and the US - see http://www.sqlskills.com/upcomingConferences.asp for details.

It's official! We're doing another 5-day SQL Immersion Event (our ever-popular SQL Server master-class) this year in the US!

We decided to put on a class near Seattle this time as Washington is *fabulous* in August!

The class will follow our regular 5-day format with our best content covering:

• On-disk structures: how the data is stored
• Index internals: how the data is organized
• Logging and recovery: how the data is protected
• Choosing the RIGHT Data Type
• Table & Index Partitioning Strategies
• Data Access
• Indexing Strategies
• Data and log file provisioning and management
• Tempdb
• Index and statistics maintenance
• Using backup and restore (plus internals)
• Consistency checking and disaster recovery

The event will be held in the Marriott Courtyard Bellevue Downtown and will be fully catered - there's a special room rate of $159/night and even a hotel room discount for the first 10 people to sign up with the hotel.

The full cost is US$3100 with an early-bird special of US$2500 for registrations before midnight PST June 18th.

Check out the Immersion Event page for full details, registration, and feedback from attendees of our event in Boston earlier this year (or jump straight to registration).

We hope to see you there!

 

This one-day MasterClass (June 17th, 2010) will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance.

The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:

• Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour  
• Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data  
• Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database
• Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier!

EARLY BIRD OFFER: Register before 31st May and SAVE £50

Places for this must-attend event are limited: Book now for just £199 +VAT

Full delegate price is £249 +VAT

Registration and more details: click here.

 

(And if you want even more in-depth training, don't forget the 3 classes scheduled in Dublin at the end of June and start of July. See here for details!)

We enjoyed Dublin so much in 2008 and 2009 that we're going back for two weeks this time - and teaching three classes while we're there! We'll be working with our fabulous friends (Carmel, Sandra, and Bob) at Prodata and the event will be hosted by the nice folks at Microsoft Ireland. We'll also be doing a user group presentation, as usual, and you can register for this on the MTUG website. Not sure what we'll talk about at the user group yet (probably SQL Server related :-) - suggestions?

If you register for any of the classes, be sure to use this special discount code "PRB" which gets you 5% off and we'll know you saw the class on my blog.

We decided to structure the first class as a 4-day version of our popular Immersion Event and the following week do two deeper classes focusing on performance and disaster recovery.

We've taught several classes this year already and had rave reviews of the content, our knowledge, and presentation style. Check them out for yourself (with quotes extracted from their blog posts):

• Greg Gonzalez, President and CEO of SQL Sentry wrote a long blog post about the Immersion Event he attended in Boston in April:
  • "When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no equal.  Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery.  If either ever got tired they never showed it, even after going all day and all week.  We witnessed countless demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step processes, and I can’t recall a one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to."
  • "These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do.  Completely, utterly professional."
  • "You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of egotism and lack of patience.  Nothing could be further from the truth. ... They simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient."
• Fellow-MVP Aaron Bertrand discussing the same Immersion Event:
  • "The additional insight around what's printed in the book or in Books Online is invaluable; and the experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot more information and things to watch out for than you'd ever get from the documentation alone."
• Newly-minted MCM Robert Davis of Microsoft explaining how the previous training he'd received from us at Microsoft helped him pass his MCM certification (which we also teach):
  • "I try to take the SQLSkills classes when I can. I highly recommend to everyone that they take advantage of any training opportunities that they see from this group."
• Newly-minted MCM Brent Ozar of Quest summing up the first week of the recent MCM class that we taught:
  • "To call them good trainers is an epic understatement.  They know how to deliver very, very technical material in ways that illustrate it well.  I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process."

We also have a bunch of quotes from past customers and finally, here's the press release from last year's class. Phew!

4-Day Immersion Event, June 28-July 1 2010, Dublin, Ireland: See the Prodata site for full details and for registration links and options.

Day 1: SQL Server Internals

• On-disk structures: how the data is stored
  • Records, pages, allocation bitmaps
• Index internals: how the data is organized
• Logging and recovery: how the data is protected
  • What is logging?
  • How recovery works
  • How the transaction log is structured
  • Recovery models 

Day 2: Designing for Performance

• Choosing the RIGHT Data Type
  • Understanding data types
  • Character data, overflow and LOB
  • LOB considerations
  • Date and time data types
  • Heterogeneous data types
  • Sparse columns
  • Application inconsistencies in types
• Table & Index Partitioning Strategies
  • Concepts/motivating factors in Partitioning
  • SQL Server 2000+ Partitioned Views
  • SQL Server 2005+ Partitioned Tables
  • Partitioning Design Techniques Combined
  • Partitioned and non-partitioned Indexes
  • Implementing the Sliding Window Scenario

Day 3: Indexing for Performance

• Data Access
  • Data Access Patterns
  • Covering
  • Using INCLUDE (SQL Server 2005+)
  • Using Filters (SQL Server 2008+)
• Indexing Strategies
  • Indexing for AND
  • Indexing for OR
  • Indexing for Joins
  • Indexing for Aggregates
  • Indexed Views (Overview)

Day 4: Essential Database Maintenance

• Data and log file provisioning and management
  • Database layout considerations
  • Growing and shrinking
  • Instant initialization
• Tempdb
• Index and statistics maintenance
• Using backup and restore
• Consistency checking

Performance Optimization Masterclass, July 5-6 2010, Dublin, Ireland: See the Prodata site for full details and for registration links and options.

(This is not duplicate content to the 4-day class - it's deeper knowledge and really requires the equivalent knowledge to the 4-day class to get the best out of it.)

Part 1: Optimizing Procedural Code

• Module 1: Batches and Plan Cache
  • Statement execution and plan caching
  • sp_executesql and dynamic string execution
• Module 2: Optmizing Procedural Code
• Understanding stored procedures
  • Understanding recompilation
  • Creating an optimal plan
  • Forcing plans & plan guides

Part 2: Resource Monitoring and Troubleshooting

• Module 1: Waits & Queues
  • What are waits and queues?
  • What should you be looking for?
• Module 2: Locking / blocking
  • Locking overview
  • Examples of blocking scenarios
  • Troubleshooting blocking
  • Blocking avoidance strategies
• Module 3: Resource governor
• Module 4: Extended Events
• Module 5: Performance Data Collection

Part 3: Are Your Index Strategies Working?

• Module 1: index cleanup
  • Index usage and consolidation
• Module 2: Index health
  • What is fragmentation
  • Detecting fragmentation
  • Removing fragmentation
• Module 3: Missing indexes
  • DTA

Disaster Recovery Masterclass, July 7-8 2010, Dublin, Ireland: See the Prodata site for full details and for registration links and options.

(This is not duplicate content to the 4-day class - it's deeper knowledge and really requires the equivalent knowledge to the 4-day class to get the best out of it.)

Part I: Fundamentals

• Module 1: Internals
  • Introduction to database structures
  • Introduction to logging and recovery
  • How recovery models affect disaster recovery
• Module 2: Data Storage
  • Choosing a RAID level
  • Storage tuning for fast recovery

Part II: Strategy

• Module 3: Planning a disaster recovery strategy
  • Requirements and limitations
  • Testing
• Module 4: Architecting for recoverability
  • Partial database availability
  • Planning a backup strategy
  • Database snapshots
  • Utilizing high-availability technologies

Part III: Practicalities

• Module 5: Recovering from a disaster with backups
  • Tail-of-the-log backups
  • Determining restore sequence
  • Point-in-time restore
  • Piecemeal restore
  • System databases
• Module 6: Recovering from a disaster without backups
  • Interpreting DBCC CHECKDB output
  • Using database repair
  • Using EMERGENCY mode

We really hope to see you at one or more of these classes!

Our first public class of the year is just over 3 weeks away! This is the *only* public class we'll be teaching in the US in 2010. There are a few spots left so book now to avoid disappointment.

We've teamed up with our good friend Adam Machanic to bring a week-long custom class to the Boston area. In this class Kimberly and I take turns teaching modules and we're both on hand to answer questions, do research, and try things out (and banter too!). The tag-team approach works *really well* and make the class very enjoyable and relaxed for those attending (and for us!).

The class will be March 29th-April 2nd in the Le Meridien hotel in Cambridge, MA and will cover:

• On-disk structures: how the data is stored
• Index internals: how the data is organized
• Logging and recovery: how the data is protected
• Choosing the RIGHT Data Type
• Table & Index Partitioning Strategies
• Data Access
• Indexing Strategies
• Data and log file provisioning and management
• Tempdb
• Index and statistics maintenance
• Using backup and restore (plus internals)
• Consistency checking and disaster recovery

You can see a much more detailed course outline here and full details including how to register at Adam's Boston SQL Training website.

We hope to see you there!

Due to some Microsoft date changes, the Spring SQL Connections show had to move to the week of April 12th. As a knock-on effect - and believe me, there were a bunch for us! - the public class Immersion Event we're doing in Boston had to move out of that week, and is now two weeks earlier in March. The locations remain the same though. Our Upcoming Events page has all the details and links to the registration sites (don't forget the Early-Bird specials for both!), but in a nutshell, it's:

• 5-day intense public class on internals, maintenance, performance tuning, disaster recovery with Kimberly and I, March 29 - April 2, Boston
• Spring SQL Connections, April 12 - 16, Las Vegas

Both events are going to be very cool - hope to see you at one (or both!) of them!

The first of our public classes (what we call Immersion Events) in 2010 is now officially open for registrations!

We've teamed up with our good friend Adam Machanic to bring a week-long custom class to the Boston area. In this class Kimberly and I take turns teaching modules and we're both on hand to answer questions, do research, and try things out (and banter too!). The tag-team approach works *really well* and make the class very enjoyable and relaxed for those attending (and for us!).

The class will be April 12-16 2010 in the Le Meridien hotel in Cambridge, MA and is $3100 for the week. If you use the discount code EARLYBIRD you'll get $600 off for registering before February 1st.

The class will cover:

• On-disk structures: how the data is stored
• Index internals: how the data is organized
• Logging and recovery: how the data is protected
• Choosing the RIGHT Data Type
• Table & Index Partitioning Strategies
• Data Access
• Indexing Strategies
• Data and log file provisioning and management
• Tempdb
• Index and statistics maintenance
• Using backup and restore (plus internals)
• Consistency checking and disaster recovery

You can see a much more detailed course outline here and full details including how to register at Adam's Boston SQL Training website.

We hope to see you there!

We're part-way through the Fall conference season, and in the middle of teaching week 1 of the current Microsoft Certified Master - SQL class. At the weekend we head off to Australia to teach some public classes in Melbourne - last chance to sign up for them!

Here's what we have coming up:

• October 15-16. Kimberly and I will be teaching a 2-day class "SQL Server 2008: New Features - Updating Your Administrations Skills in Database Infrastructure and Scalability" in Melbourne, Australia
• October 19-22. I'll be teaching a 4-day class "SQL Server 2005/2008: DB Maintenance and Availability: From Performance to Disaster Recovery" in Melbourne.
• October 19-22. Kimberly will be teaching a 4-day class "SQL Server 2005/2008: Performance Tuning – From Design to Indexing to Optimizing Procedural Code" in Melbourne.
• November 2-5. SQL PASS, Seattle: Kimberly and I will be teaching two full-day workshops and a Spotlight Session each.
• Nobember 9-12: SQL Connections, Las Vegas: Kimberly and I will be teaching two full-day workshops and 5 sessions. Stacia will be teaching 4 sessions on BI.
• November 5 and 17: Kimberly and I will be teaching a day each of the Microsoft Certified Master - SharePoint class.

You can find more details and links to the various registration sites on our Upcoming Events page.

Hope to see you there!

Yes, I'm a week late (at least) uploading these, and I apologize. But better late than never!

For those lucky 48 people who attended our week-long SQL class in Dublin at the end of September, I've uploaded all our demo scripts on our past conferences page. Let me know if you have any issues.

Enjoy!

While we're in Ireland teaching our Immersion Event (week-long in-depth class on SQL Server internals/performance/maintenance/DR), we'll be doing a user group meeting as well in Dublin on Wednesday September 23rd.  You can find out the details and register here.

The Immersion Event (Septemer 21-25) already has a good class size but of course we have space for a a few more attendees - check out the details of the class at http://www.eventznet.com/SQLImmersion.

Hope to see you there!

We've finally nailed down the dates for all our Fall classes and conferences around the world. Here's the plan:

• September 21-25. Kimberly and I will be teaching a week-long Immersion Event in Dublin, Ireland - combining internals, performance tuning, database maintenance and more.
• September 29-30. Kimberly and I will be presenting a full day of SQL Server sessions at the Microsoft Technology Summit 2009 in Warsaw, Poland
• October 15-16. Kimberly and I will be teaching a 2-day class "SQL Server 2008: New Features - Updating Your Administrations Skills in Database Infrastructure and Scalability" in Melbourne, Australia
• October 19-22. I'll be teaching a 4-day class "SQL Server 2005/2008: DB Maintenance and Availability: From Performance to Disaster Recovery" in Melbourne.
• October 19-22. Kimberly will be teaching a 4-day class "SQL Server 2005/2008: Performance Tuning – From Design to Indexing to Optimizing Procedural Code" in Melbourne.
• November 2-5. SQL PASS, Seattle: Kimberly and I will be teaching two full-day workshops and a Spotlight Session each.
• Nobember 9-12: SQL Connections, Las Vegas: Kimberly and I will be teaching two full-day workshops and 5 sessions. Stacia will be teaching 4 sessions on BI.

You can find more details and links to the various registration sites on our Upcoming Events page.

Hope to see you there!

PS And yes, we'll be teaching week 1 of each SQL MCM rotation and a couple of days from each SharePoint MCM rotation through the next year as well.

Kimberly and I will be teaching a week-long public Immersion Event in Dublin, September 21-25, in partnership with our good friends at Prodata and Microsoft Ireland.

The class will cover:

• Day 1: SQL Server Internals (On-disk structures, index internals, logging, recovery, transaction log architecture)
• Day 2: Designing for Performance (data types, table and index partitioning)
• Day 3: Indexing for Performance (Access patterns, covering, INCLUDE, indexing strategies)
• Day 4: Essential Database Maintenance (data and log files, tempdb, index and statistics maintenance, backup and restore)
• Day 5.1: Essential Database Maintenance (consistency checking and disaster recovery)
• Day 5.2: SQL Consolidation and Virtualization

This is going to be a great workshop where we combine the best of all our various classes into a superb learning opportunity.

Checkout the registration site for more in-depth details about the content, location, and cost.

Hope to see you there!

This year it looks like we're not going to be involved in TechEd US in May so the SQL Connections show in Orlando in March (21-26) will be the best way to pick up some of our training in the first half of the year. We are planning to do some Immersion events in various locations around the world (including the US) in the second half of 2009, so watch the blog for announcements.

Anyway, at this Connections Kimberly and I are going all-out on indexes - here's what we've got planned:

• A full-day pre-con workshop on index internals, statistics, and fragmentation (2000, 2005, 2008)
• A full-day post-con workshop on analyzing your indexing strategy - looking for extra, missing, or unhealthy indexes and dealing with them (2000, 2005, 2008)
• A session by Kimberly on tuning indexes for various search arguments, joins, and aggregates (i.e. indexing for performance)
• A session by Kimberly on sparse columns and filtered indexes in SQL Server 2008

And apart from indexing-mania, we'll have sessions on surviving database corruption and effective database maintenance. Our plan is to have AS LITTLE OVERLAP AS POSSIBLE between all these sessions and workshops - that's a lot of material!

Of course, Bob Beauchemin will be there with a plethora of developer-centric topics (including a full-day pre-pre-con on spatial data) and a bunch of other top SQL speakers that we've pulled together to create a great show.

Checkout out our Upcoming Events page for all the abstracts and details on how to register.

Hope to see you there!

In the previous blog post I mentioned our partner company in Australia, so I'd better explain...

We have a new partner company - SQLskills.com.au - run by our good friend and fellow MVP Greg Linwood, along-side his other company MyDBA, which provides DBA support, consulting and staffing services to customers world-wide. By extending SQLskills.com into Australia, we can provide world-class training to the burgeoning SQL Server base in and around Australia, without customers having to travel to the US. As well as providing their own custom courses, the SQLskills.com.au team will be teaching courses developed by me, Kimberly, and Bob Beauchemin - using only the best instructors that we've personally taught and approved.

Update 12/10/08: the Australia classes have been pushed out to June 2009 for various reasons - watch the blog for more details.

The courses have already been running the last two months to great success and I'm very excited to announce that Kimberly and I are coming to Australia in February 2009 to teach four classes in the SQLskills.com.au training facility in Melbourne. The classes we have planned are:

• SQL Server 2008 Database Infrastructure and Scalability (Paul & Kimberly, February 24^th-26^th)
• Internals and Storage Structures (Paul & Kimberly, March 3^rd)
• SQL Server 2005/2008 Performance Tuning (Kimberly, March 4^th-6^th)
• Database Maintenance - From Performance to Disaster Recovery (Paul, March 4^th-6^th)

Click the links for more details and registration info. The internals course (or equivalent knowledge) is really a pre-requisite for the perf tuning and maintenance courses that immediately follow it, as these courses will be really in-depth.

Checkout the SQLskills.com.au site for other classes they offer for developers and BI specialists.

We hope to see you in Melbourne next year!