The conference was two days, with the first day being two-half day deep dives and today being one-hour seminars with a wider range of topics. I learned some new information about SQL Server (a new version is coming out soon) and because AI is the new shiny thing in tech these days, I learned how AI is going to be used in the database space going forward (at least for Microsoft). Along with some of the pie-in-the-sky scenarios I came away with a few things that are tangible tools (e.g. Vector Search) and a much better understanding of how LLMs work. I’ve been away from conferences for so long I forgot how they can re-invigorate a person with some passion for the things we do every day at work. For the first time in a long while I am excited to see how something I learned will work when I get back “in the office.”

The sessions were good, but by far the best part of coming to this conference was reconnecting with the community. This morning, I woke up very early to go on a run organized by one of the other attendants. It was a small group, but I got to run with someone who I’ve only seen on Strava for the last six years. Both nights after the conference I went out to dinner with a small group of people so we could keep the geekery going. It is great just being in a space where everyone wants to geek out about the latest feature in SQL Server and where you can make a joke about how you “love” ORMs and everyone gets it. I had multiple people come up to me today and say hello that I haven’t seen in six years or more. I’m horrible with names and faces, but luckily everyone has a badge so I could quickly get some context and start catching up and telling each other what are working on now.

One of the people at our dinner was just starting out his career in the database world and, knowing we might be biased, asked why SQL Server might be better than Oracle or vice-versa? The answers were all mostly some version of, “It depends.”

But two of us at the table said SQL Server was better. Because of the community. I am sure the Oracle devs are nice, but to my knowledge they don’t have the same close community as the people who are part of the #sqlfamily. It’s great to be back.

I considered limiting this to just T-SQL, but that seemed….limiting. It just has to be something SQL related and also small enough that you can explain in a single blog post. Maybe a T-SQL command or DMV you have been meaning to learn more about or an SSIS component or PowerShell commandlet you’ve never used before. Try not to make it too theoretical I want some code snippets or screen shots. OK. We’ll meet back here on the internets in a week and all have some new knowledge.

If this was a commercial this would be the part the lawyers make me say:

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly block party for bloggers started by the renowned Adam Machanic (B|T). The community has been doing this monthly blog party for quite some time now and it is a great way for new bloggers to contribute and to get interesting conversations going. All you have to do is follow these simple rules.

1. Your post must go live between 00:00:00 GMT on Tuesday April 14 and 00:00:00 GMT on Wednesday April 15.
2. Your post has to link back to the hosting blog post, and the link must be anchored from the T-SQL Tuesday LOGO (found above) which must also appear at the top of the post.
3. Trackbacks might work but you can also leave a comment, but definitely tweet about your post and include the #tsql2sday hashtag (you can optionally add my twitter handle @SQLMD)

Next Tuesday (12/16) is the December meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). We are doing something different this month. Instead of doing a single presentation by one person we are going to have several local SQL people debate some SQL-related topics. the catch is none of us will know what the topics are ahead of time. We are calling it, SQL Improv: Who’s Line is it anyway? Or at least I am calling it that. Come watch me think on my feet along with Jason Strate, Mark Vaillancourt, Paul Timmerman,  Dave Valentine, Ben Thul, and Jim Dorame. It is sure to be fun and if we do it right you might even learn something along the way.

Before we show a presentation where the topics are made up and the points don’t matter there are a few things to tell you about in the world of PASSMN.

The make up of the PASSMN Board has been decided for 2015

• Board Chair – Rick Krueger (B|T)
• Director of SQL Saturday – Jennifer McConnell (T)
• Director of Corporate Development  – Jim Dorame (B|T)
• Director of Program Development – Dave Valentine (B|T)
• Director of Membership/Treasurer – Ben Thul (B|T)
• Director of Technology – Riley Major (T)
• Microsoft Representative – Mike Fulkerson

It’s a pretty great team assembled for the next year and after having lunch with them this week I know they are all excited to continue keeping PASSMN active and interesting. It takes some extra work for us to transition our board every two years, but it is worth it when I see the new ideas and fresh enthusiasm being introduced to the group leadership – and 2015 hasn’t even started yet.

We are giving you these topics for free

For our PASSMN meetings we have often had a short presentation at the beginning followed by a longer presentation. But not as often as we would have liked. When we ask new people about presenting the conversation usual turns to figuring out what they might talk about. In 2015 we will be striving to include a short presentation each month focused on one of the many free tools available for SQL Server. Dave Valentine will start us off in January with a brief overview of Bids Helper, a Visual Studio enhancement for SSIS and SSAS development.

Hope to see you next week at the PASSMN meeting. We will be raffling off another of the awesome SQL Sat MN shirts and a 2TB external hard drive.

Today (11/18) is the November meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). Our presenter this month is Microsoft SQL Server MVP Paul Timmerman (T). Paul is presenting on how SQL Server Database Snapshots will make our lives easier. I learned a ton when he presented on Read Committed Snapshot Isolation level last year so I expect to gain some knowledge tonight (evidently Paul only presents sessions with the word snapshot in them).

Before we let Paul isolate our snapshots there are a few things going on in the world of SQL Server to tell you about.

This Saturday (11/22) is SQL Saturday Winnipeg. There are a bunch of PASSMN people headed up to the Great White North to share some SQL knowledge and we are not sorry about it. It’s a quick drive up and there is going to be curling at the after party. Curling, people. I think they still have some room left if you want to join us.

On Thursday December 2nd The MN Microsoft BI User Group is meeting. Joe Berg and Matthew Lawrence will present a session on the new Machine Learning product in Azure and the second talk is on SSAS extended events presented by Prashant Toila and SQL Server MVP Mark Vaillancourt (B|T). Slalom Consulting will be hosting a happy hour afterwards at Pinstripes in Edina.

PASSMN Board elections. The way things have worked out this year we will not be having elections. We have ended up with four open spots and four candidates. Please welcome Jim Dorame (B|T), Dave Valentine (B|T), Ben Thul (B|T), and Riley Major (T) to the PASSMN Board. They will begin their term in January of 2015.

Hope to see you at the PASSMN meeting tonight.

A little over two years ago I was starting to get more involved in PASSMN. The people on the PASSMN Board inspired me with their commitment and willingness to donate their time and knowledge to the Minnesota SQL Server community. At the time I didn’t know the board members as people. I viewed them with a certain amount of awe and nervously volunteered to speak and to help with events like SQL Saturday. It was easy to see them as heroes and they inspired me to push myself.

Maybe it is all of the activity these days around planning the current SQL Saturday, but I realized that I am now working side by side with some of these amazing people. My heroes are my fellow board PASSMN board members. They all do work that no one ever knows about and put in hours of volunteer time to help create the great SQL Server community we have here in Minnesota. I can’t begin to list all of the work these people do, but I want everyone to know how great they are. In no particular order here are the PASSMN Board heroes:

• Tracy McKibben, The Real SQL Guy (twitter) – The only person on the board to acknowledge his super powers, Tracy has booked the presenters for every PASSMN meeting this year. I think people who know Tracy are surprised this is his first official year on the board. He is deeply connected to the SQL Server community at large and shares his SQL wisdom in person, on his blog, and through webinars. He will always be my hero for single handedly organizing the first PASSMN game night.
• Will Weber (twitter) – Last year Will made sure we had corporate sponsors for every PASSMN meeting. We can’t keep PASSMN running without sponsors and without Will in 2013 we would not have had sponsors. If you had a free dinner last year at a PASSMN meeting you should thank Will. This year Will has taken on the role of Treasurer and dealt with all of the fun paperwork for things like non-profit status and bank accounts. If that isn’t heroic I don’t know what is.
• Jennifer McConnell (twitter) – The person to thank this year for all of those free dinners is Jennifer. She has made sure we have had a sponsor for our meeting each month. In addition she has facilitated a unique project this year with Kroll Ontrack to allow our members to help shape their new rapid table restore product for SQL Server.  If that isn’t enough she has taken complete charge of all the corporate sponsors for SQL Saturday #332 and created a unique format for this year’s Women in Technology panel discussion.
• Shirley Morillo  (twitter) – For the past two years if you received an email newsletter from PASSMN it is because Shirley made it happen. We are a non-profit so believe me when I tell you the tools for this could be better. Shirley is one of only a few people know how to connect all the dots and get the newsletter out the door each month.
• Rick Krueger, The Data Ogre (twitter) – Each year we appoint someone on the PASSMN Board to be in charge of SQL Saturday. This year it’s Rick. A lot of jokes get made about the amount of work it takes to put on a SQL Saturday and they are funny because they are true. Over time I have become more and more involved in SQL Saturday here in MN and every year I get a better picture of the amount of work involved. For the last two months Rick has had to venture out of his Ogre swamp and work on planning SQL Saturday #332. I can only imagine the amount of hours he has put into working on this event. Rick’s attention to detail and passion for making sure things are done right means that this is shaping up to be one of the best SQL Saturdays yet. In addition to his work on SQL Saturday Rick always makes a point to give constructive feedback to all of our presenters and he is an incredible sounding board for ideas on how to make PASSMN even better.

I’ve reread this post several times and it doesn’t come across quite the way I hoped. If you read this and it feels insincere please blame my words not the accomplishments of the board members. In addition to their time volunteering they all have full-time jobs as SQL Server professionals and real lives with families and friends and probably some non-SQL related hobbies. They all continue to inspire me and push me to be better.

Saturday September 13th: SQL Saturday #300 in Kansas City, MO

Tuesday September 16th: PASSMN September Meeting

Wednesday September 24th: Presenting at MADPASS in Madison, WI

• SQL Saturday 320, Raleigh, NC – September 6th

I have some family living in Raleigh and when I saw that they were doing a SQL Saturday again this year I realized I could kill two SPIDs with one stone. I wish I had gotten this post out before the event, but luckily they didn’t need my help in getting the word out. The event was very well organized and I was very jealous of their location at Wake Tech. They had several large classrooms mostly on a single hallway and they had some beautiful North Carolina weather, which allowed them to stage all of the registration outside. I presented my session on T-SQL refactoring for the first time to a live studio audience and it went OK. There are a couple of things I need to work on, but thanks to some heckling by fellow presenters Chris Bell (@CBellDBA) and Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) I have a better idea what those things are. Doug Purnell (@sqlnikon) was there with his camera and he even got a picture of me. There is also a great picture of all the presenters and volunteers. I am hoping we can steal the group picture idea for SQLSatMN. I had a great time at this event and hope I can return next year.

If you live in the Triangle make sure this event is on your plans for next year and in the mean time you can attend the TriPass meetings on the third Tuesday of the month. It’s the same as our MN schedule so it is easy for me to remember.

• SQL Saturday 300, Kansas City, MO – September 13th

This coming Saturday I will be presenting in Kansas City. It is my first year attending this event, but after being tortured last year by the delicious #sqlbbq tweets I knew I couldn’t skip it again. If you are a SQL Server professional in Kansas city this is the place to be on Saturday 9/13. I know they have filled their 400 spots for attendees, but you can still add your name to the waiting list and wait for someone else to cancel. In addition to presenting my session on TSQL Refactoring I am looking forward to attending the sessions by Bob Ward (@bobwardms), Microsoft’s CSS Principal Escalation Engineer, The Top Customer Problems: How to avoid calling Bob and Troubleshooting the Memory of SQL Server. I am also looking forward to eating some great BBQ and catching up with some #sqlfamily that I haven’t seen all summer.

• September PASSMN Meeting – September 16th

You can read more about this month’s meeting on this post but just to recap, Our presenters will be Paula Merns presenting on Checklists for Better Coordination and Performance of SQL Tasks and Riley Major will give a short presentation on Correlated Concatenation with XML. Go here to RSVP for this month’s meeting.

• September Meeting of MADPASS, Madison, WI – September 24th

If I had to pick another PASS chapter to belong to it would be the Madison group. I spoke at my first SQL Saturday in Madison and it was watching one of their presenters that first inspired me to start presenting. The 4.5 hour drive makes it a little difficult to get to the meetings, but I have watched a few of them on the internets over the years. So, I was happy when they asked me to come and present, but also a little nervous. I have not presented for a user group in over two years. At a SQL Saturday it is easy to get lost in the crowd and people can always walk over to the next room if your topic is not engaging them. I will do my best to keep things interesting when I present my session Twice in a Lifetime: TSQL Refactoring 101.

Next Tuesday (9/16) is the September meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). Our main presenter this month is the Paula Merns. Paula will be expanding on her checklist presentation from last December and showing us how she uses checklists as a database professional. In addition to the main topic we will have a short presentation on using XML functions to create correlated lists by Riley Major.

Before we start making checklists there are a couple other things going on in the world of SQL.

If you are a member of PASS then it is almost time to vote for the next group of people joining the board. The official slate of candidates for the national PASS Board will be announced on September 17th. Watch your email inbox for your “ballot.” You can read about the process and the current timeline on the PASS website.

We will also be looking at electing three members to the local PASSMN chapter. As usual we have three members (myself included) rolling of the board at the end of 2014. If you are interested in being on the board next year let us know. There will be more information on this in the coming months.

SQL Saturday Minnesota is coming up on October 10/25/2014. Come join us for a full day of free SQL Server training. The schedule for the event has been posted and it is a great lineup with tracks for DBA’s, Developers, and BI professionals. You can register at the event website – don’t wait because we do cap the event to make sure we have room for everyone. You don’t want to end up on the waitlist and then miss out on Dave Valentine (twitter|blog) showing everyone how to make simple T-SQL changes that go a long way or Gina Meronek (twitter|blog) explaining how to use Power BI prototypes to deliver SQL Reporting.

The day before SQL Saturday we have four all day pre-conference sessions. Each one is a full day of training from a Microsoft SQL Server expert for only $99. You can check those out and register here.

The 2014 PASS Summit follows shortly after that in Seattle, WA from 11/4-11/7. The PASS Summit is the world’s largest SQL Server conference with over 200 technical sessions and 5000 attendees. Make sure you use our Chapter code when you register to save $150. the PASSMN chapter code is USNCS28.

Hope to see you at the meeting.

Next Tuesday (8/19) is the August meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). Our presenter this month is the Ross McNeely (twitter | blog). Ross will be presenting a Spatial Data Deep Dive going over Spatial Data types, the Bing Spatial Data Services, and Spatial Analysis. It is a topic I haven’t taken much time to dig into, but it seems like almost every company I have worked at has some sort of geospatial data.

Before we learn how to get our data to tell us where we are in the world there are a few other things going on in the world of SQL.

In just a couple of weeks there will be another PASSMN Rochester meeting. The meeting is on Wednesday August 27th at the Mayo Clinic – Baldwin Building. The topic is still being pinned down.

In mid October (10/13-10/17) the one and only Kalen Delaney (twitter | blog) is coming out teach her SQL Server Internals class. Kalen has written the book (several actually) on SQL Server Internals and doesn’t make it out to MN often. Book now before it fills up – SQL Server 2012 Architecture, Internals, and Tuning. We are also talking to Kalen about speaking to the user group the week she is out here. We’ll announce an October meeting once we have all the details worked out.

SQL Saturday Minnesota is coming up on October 10/25/2014. Come join us for a full day of free SQL Server training.  You can register at the event website. If you are interested in presenting at SQL Saturday MN you have until 8/26/2014 to send in your session topics on our Call for Speakers page. If you have any questions about presenting or attending you can reach the PASSMN Board by emailing [email protected].

The 2014 PASS Summit follows shortly after that in Seattle, WA from 11/4-11/7. The PASS Summit is the world’s largest SQL Server conference with over 200 technical sessions and 5000 attendees. Make sure you use our Chapter code when you register to save $150. the PASSMN chapter code is USNCS28.

Hope to see you at the meeting.

Tuesday of this week (7/15) was the July meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). Our presenter this month was Mike Matthews (no twitter|no blog – someone should talk to him about this). Mike presented on SQL Server I/O. I didn’t get a blog post put out before the meeting to remind people, but I am hoping to have twelve posts for PASSMN for the year. I’ll just have to reflect on how the meeting went instead of announcing what it will be about.

We started the meeting with a missed connection with our monthly sponsor SIOS. They had set up a WebEx meeting to introduce themselves and their company, but the meeting link we had got canceled and by the time we had it figured out I had already made the decision to move ahead with our main presentation. If you are not familiar with SIOS, they are a unique company that provides server clusters in the cloud on windows and Linux. They have a great video that explains how it works –
SIOS delivers clusters your way. We hope to be able to introduce you to them at a future meeting and they will also be a sponsor at SQL Saturday in October.

After that rocky start Mike Mathews came in and delivered an excellent session on Analyzing your SQL Server I/O. I have seen Mike present before, but I forgot how well he does it. He conveys confidence in his subject matter and backs up all of his assertions with easy to follow demos.

As usual we shared some news of upcoming events at the meeting.

• Keep an eye out for information on the next PASSMN meeting in Rochester, MN. It should be sometime in August. More details to come.
• Kalen Delaney (twitter | blog) is coming out in October to giver her SQL Server Internals class. Kalen has written the book (several actually) on SQL Server Internals and will teaching a week long class from 10/13 – 10/17. Book now before it fills up – SQL Server 2012 Architecture, Internals, and Tuning. We are also talking to Kalen about speaking to the user group the week she is out here. We’ll announce an October meeting once we have all the details worked out.
• Also in October (10/25) we will be having our local SQL Saturday. Be sure to register now and avoid the rush. It is a full day of free SQL Server training (there is a $10 fee for lunch). Our call for speakers is open until 8/26. If you are interested in speaking and have any questions feel free to ask anyone on the board. I’ve outlined how the submission process works here.
• And in November (11/5-11/7)  is the international PASS Summit 2014. The Summit is returning to Seattle this year and it is the SQL Server event to go to for learning and networking. I will be presenting this year for the first time. Be sure to use the PASSMN chapter code when you register to save $150. When you use our code we get money back for the PASSMN group. $150 discount code = USNCS28

And the SQL conversation continued after the meeting when Mike went out with a few of us for a couple of beers. We had perfect weather for sitting out on the patio and I think we even managed to talk about a few things other than SQL.

Hope to see you at our August meeting (8/19) when Ross McNeely (twitter | blog) will take us on a deep dive into Spatial Data.

Tomorrow (6/17) is the June meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASSMN). For June we are doing a lightning talk format that will include short talks from Paul Timmerman (blog|twitter), Rizwan Hassan (twitter), myself, and a short presentation from our sponsor this month, Kroll Ontrack, with an update on their SQL backup product. It is the first time I have presented at the user group since March of 2012 and I am looking forward to it.

I think for many Minnesotans there is a lull in work and career activities in the summer. We only have so long to enjoy the nice weather that has finally arrived (minus the rain). But it isn’t too soon to start thinking about the SQL events in the Fall.

First is SQL Saturday MN on Obtober 25th, 2014. SQL Saturday is a free 1-day SQL Server training event (with a $10 fee for lunch) that is organized by PASSMN. Register now to avoid getting put on the wait list. It is also a great chance for local speakers to get involved and share knowledge with the community.

And shortly afterwards is the international PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle, WA Nov 4-7. I can’t really say it better than they did on the website –

PASS Summit is the world’s largest, most-focused, and most-intensive conference for Microsoft SQL Server and BI professionals.

I was finally able to go last year and it was an amazing learning and networking event. Unlike anything else I have done in my career. If you can make it happen you should go. As an added incentive you can save $150 by using our chapter discount code. If you use our code we get money back from PASS to use for our local events. [CODE = USNCS28]

Hope to see you at the meeting.