As well as the usual round of conferences later this year, we've also organized some public classes in the UK after lots of requests. In between these two classes we'll be hopping over to Dublin to do a launch seminar for Microsoft on SQL Server 2008 - more details on that as they become available.

The UK classes are organized with our UK partners SQLKnowHow.com. We haven't taught in the UK since a one-day seminar we did with Tony Rogerson (one of the founders of SQLKnowHow) back in March last year so this is pretty exciting (and the Edinburgh class will be at my old alma-mater, The University of Edinburgh). The complete line-up is below - register now to avoid disappointment as the classes are filling up fast.

Best Practices in Performance and Availability for SQL Server 2005/2008

• When: 1^st to 3^rd September, 2008
• Where: Hatfield, Hertfordshire
• Who: Paul and Kimberly
• How much: See here for details, discounts, and early-bird specials

• What:

  This class has three primary goals (for almost all topics/modules): planning, practice/implementation and post-mortem - with the largest emphasis on designing/implementing the RIGHT solution. Questions that you must ask are: How do you choose technologies to fit requirements and effectively use key features of SQL Server 2005/2008? How does your technology/choice affect workload performance?

  Only after an in-depth plan is developed should you move on to actual implementation. So what are the areas that you need to consider?

  • Architecting for Availability
  • Architecting for Performance
  • Maintaining Performance and Availability

  And just to be clear, this is not a high-level class on planning. This is an intense, in-depth class encompassing structures, internals, technologies and solutions. Planning is a critical part of performance, high-availability, database maintenance and disaster recovery - but the most-often disregarded.

  Performance tuning spans many areas within SQL Server from database creation to database design to the code you execute (ad-hoc or procedural). A single magic bullet does not exist (indexing is the closest thing to a magic bullet for some queries). However, to achieve a truly scalable and reliable database it takes a variety of best practices - from database creation (including file structure and placement) to table design and creation (using vertical and horizontal partitioning techniques) to system architecture (including disaster recovery planning and implementation) to ongoing maintenance. Whether you're trying to achieve high performance for a few users or scale to support thousands, there are numerous areas that you can tune to improve performance - proactively. But, how do you make this a reality?

  SQL Server 2005 and 2008 provide a variety of options to help keep your database more available. However, even in the event of a disaster, are you sure you know the best path for recovery - with the least amount of downtime and/or data loss? Putting a well-thought out plan into practice requires a thorough understanding of the technologies, their pitfalls and the effects of many technologies when combined. In terms of architecture, we will start by discussing the most important part of designing an available solution - requirements. Then we'll show how to use requirements to drive a technology decision - not the other way around, which happens so often and results in an inadequate implementation.

  No matter how much effort you spend on the design of your database, if you don't maintain it in production then it will suffer from performance and manageability problems - and possibly data loss and/or downtime. The key to availability and performance is well thought-out and automated database maintenance. The final part of the course will discuss maintenance strategies required to keep your carefully designed system available and performing well, plus a primer on recovering from disasters.

  If you're planning, or already manage, an enterprise system and want better performance and availability - then this is the place to be!

  Module List:

  1. Foundations - SQL Server structures and algorithms
  2. Architecting for Availability
  3. Architecting for Performance
  4. Maintaining Performance and Availability

Indexing for Performance in SQL Server 200/2005/2008

• When: 8^th to 9^th September, 2008
• Where: Edinburgh
• Who: Paul and Kimberly
• How much: See here for details, discounts, and early-bird specials

• What:

  There are many areas of performance tuning in SQL Server: database design, application design, hardware/software configuration, and many more. But none are as important as indexing. Creating the "right indexes" is the most important thing you can do for performance and scalability. Is proper indexing something your application is missing? Do you realize the impact of your clustering key; forcing your base structure of your tables to be either ordered or unordered. If ordered is chosen, by what type of column(s) should the data be ordered? Is the decision solely based on query performance or are there other factors?

  Whether your system is 24x7 or a small system just trying to setup for future growth and improved performance this course is for you! We will cover the often-overlooked impacts of poorly chosen clustered indexes, where/why clustered indexes help the most and how the type of table and the type/frequency of your queries affect your decisions. Additionally, once the internals, statistics and base table structures have been defined, we will talk about indexing strategies for search arguments (including SQL Server 2008 Filtered Indexes), joins, aggregations and appropriate uses for indexed views. Finally, we'll discuss index maintenance as well as how to evaluate your indexing strategy over time to make sure it remains appropriate as your data and workload changes.

  If you want better performance and excellent insight into the wide range of indexing strategies - as well as how things work internally, this is the place to be!

  Course Modules

  1. Index Internals
  2. Statistics
  3. Indexing Strategies, Part I: SARGs and Joins
  4. Indexing Strategies, Part II: Aggregations and Indexed Views
  5. Index Maintenance
  6. Is Your Indexing Strategy Working?