OK, so after SQL Connections in Las Vegas, Paul and I head off to Barcelona for the second week of TechEd’s two week event (week one for developers and week two for IT professionals). November’s definitely a busy month. So, if you’re in the US – we hope to see you at Connections and if you’re in Europe, we hope to see you at Microsoft TechEd ITForum 2007.
Here’s what we’re doing:
Sessions
- (DAT205) The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Manageability Overview
The next release of SQL Server will contain exciting new manageability features targeted at reducing total cost of ownership. Come learn more about what’s in store in areas like policy-driven administration and performance data collection and analysis. The session focuses on the database engine.
- (DAT301) SQL Server Indexing – Unravelling the Unknown
Knowing tips and tricks to indexing is extremely helpful and will help you to solve “known” query problems. But what’s lurking in the unknown? Is SQL Server using your indexes? Or, do you have a bunch of indexes sitting around wasting space and negatively impacting performance? Finally, SQL Server 2005 has an answer! SQL Server 2005 DMVs (Dynamic Management Views) can provide you with valuable information about your current indexing strategies, what should be removed, and even what’s missing. Do you know how to find this information, leverage it, and then programmatically respond to it? Come to this session to learn a few tips and tricks as well as how to figure out the unknown indexing problems!
- (DAT305) Secrets to Fast Detection and Recovery from Database Corruptions
How can you tell whether your data is corrupt? If you have corruption, how do you work out what’s wrong with the database? How do you ensure you have a valid backup? If you don’t have a valid backup, how and what do you repair? If you do have a backup, how do you work out whether you should restore or repair? And at what granularity? How do you go about determining what went wrong in the first place? It’s all about limiting downtime and data-loss when a corruption occurs – from knowing the tools to understanding the choices to planning a successful strategy. Some of the features discussed:
- Torn-page detection and page checksums
- IO read-retry
- Backup checksums
- Consistency checks (DBCC CHECKDB and related commands)
- Database repairs
Facing database corruption is almost inevitable in every DBAs career – make sure you’re prepared when it happens to you.
Chalk-talks
- (DAT01-IS) SQL Server Upgrade Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks
Even though SQL Server 2005 has been out for a while, many companies are only just getting ready to upgrade. Come to this session to learn best practices, tips, and tricks distilled from two years of customer experiences. We’ll also touch on some issues you’ll face going to SQL Server 2008 when it’s released next year. Come to this session to learn and share – bring your questions and experiences!
- (DAT02-IS) SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring: Setup to Implementation to Monitoring
Database Mirroring is one of the most exciting technologies in SQL Server 2005. With more and more people including it in their Disaster Recovery Strategies, it’s important to know when to implement Database Mirroring as well as the implications of the architecture you choose. In this session there will be no slides just demos that will explore how Database Mirroring works in its various configurations and how that may effect your performance. Join us and see database mirroring in action and get your questions answered!
- (DAT07-IS) DBCC Internals
All DBAs should have heard of (and used) DBCC – especially for consistency checking. Get down deeper than 400-level with this session on how some of the most important DBCC commands work. Topics covered include CHECKDB, SHRINKFILE, INDEXDEFRAG, and more.
Instructor-led labs
- (DAT03-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 1 – Database Mirroring
See Database Mirroring in action! From implementation to monitoring to failover, database mirroring provides an ideal solution for many disaster recovery scenarios and this session will prepare you to handle them with minimal downtime or data loss.
- (DAT04-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 2 – Database Snapshots
Database Snapshots are useful in many situations: database maintenance, data recovery, and point-in-time data access. You can even create a snapshot on a mirror database to get better return-on-investment (ROI) on your high-avaialbility (HA) investments. In this session we will explain how database snapshots work as well as go through several exercises, including working with multiple database snapshots and creating database snapshots on a mirror database.
- (DAT05-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 3 – Online Operations
The bane of any DBA’s life is to have to take data offline to perform maintenance or recover from a disaster. The various Online Operations in SQL Server 2005 alleviate much of this frustration. This session will show you how to move a table online for better isolation and control, partition a table online, access a database that’s partially damaged, and perform online piecemeal restore.
Lunchtime Demos
- (DAT01-PD) Database Recovery Techniques
In this fast-paced demo session nasty things will be done repeatedly to database. Then the methods and approaches to recovery will be shown. Not for the faint-hearted!
So, just like SQL Connections the week before, serious amounts of info with tips and tricks for you to take home and implement!
It’s going to be a great week. We hope to see you there!!
Kimberly (and Paul)