Fort Worth SQL Server Users Group

Wednesday, Aug 21th, 2013

6:30 PM Meet & Greet | 7 PM Presentation

We would like to apologize for last June. We promised you a Mike lecture and ended up swapping at the last minute do to a little emergency room action. We are all better than ever and back on track.

Topic:

Microsoft has provided some great tools for creating and editing SSIS packages. First Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). However, when creating an SSIS package you frequently repeat the same steps over and over. BIML is an XML markup language designed for representing the structure of an SSIS package. BIML Script takes that structure and generates an SSIS package.In this session we will use BIDS Helper to create a simple SSIS package using BIML. We will handle a couple SSIS scenarios with BIML and BIML Script.

Russ Loski is a SQL Server developer and occasional DBA with fifteen years of experience.  He has designed databases and created the SQL code to support applications for the Dallas Cowboys, Bank of America, T-Mobile, Coca Cola Enterprises and others.  In addition, Russ has developed large data loading projects using Microsoft's SQL Server Integration Services and its predecessor Data Transformation Services.  He has developed reports using SQL Server Reporting Services.  Russ is a regular contributor to the MSDN news groups as well as to the SQL Saturday events sponsored by SQL PASS.  He occasionally blogs at http://www.sqlmovers.com and his twitter account is @sqlmovers.

Additional notes: Dominic Nagy over at the InSource Group has a couple of contract to hire gigs in both Las Colinas (Database Developer) and Addison (SQL DBA/Developer).

Also, Paul LaGrone is making his way back North! Look for his new users group to be starting in Waco! 

Wednesday, June 19th, 2013

6:30 PM Meet & Greet | 7 PM Presentation

Topic:

To meet the needs of rapid application development and the rapidly changing needs of the business, your database code needs to be resilient.  Even the most resilient code can become incredibly expensive when things break.  Catching issues early in a development cycle saves time, money, and a lot of sleepless nights.  In this session, we will go over the basics of unit testing and how to apply the unit testing framework that ships with SSDT coupled with Team Foundation Server to add continuous integration testing to your database code.

Bio:

Mike Hotek is the Senior Business Intelligence Architect for CBRE. He has been building SQL Server systems and database management best practices for almost 20 years having worked with thousands of companies and on the largest, most complicated platforms in the world. Mike has delivered hundreds of sessions and training events around the world and has published numerous articles along with 9 books. He is currently working on book two a four book series on SQL Server.

Contact URL: http://www.ChampionValleySoftware.com

Embarcadero just extended their ER Studio product line to include a piece to capture business rules. If you are involved in or are starting a data governance initiative and want an excuse to enjoy a weekend in Austin, this lunch and learn might be for you. http://forms.embarcadero.com/forms/ERStudioLunchLearnAustin

They will be discussing:

• Obtaining reliable and relevant information via data governance
• Using ER/Studio for key governance ingredients: enterprise information maps and metadata collaboration
• Mapping  ER/Studio features to data governance maturity milestones

I am excited to announce we have finally have Brian Swales on stage! He and Brian G have lead the certification groups in the past when he's not solving the world's SharePoint problems for Microsoft. We have long wanted to hear his experience taming Sharepoint!

Topic: Indexes, statistics and other maintenance for SharePoint databases may be thought of as no different than any other application which uses databases. This is not quite true. SharePoint has been coded and optimized to make the best and exclusive use of SQL Server. SQL Server is the engine for the framework known as SharePoint. And SharePoint has been designed to work easily with minimal intervention. Of course, larger implementations will have additional needs. We will be covering the things you can do to optimize your SharePoint database environment and scale it properly.

Bio: Brian Swales is a Support Escalation Engineer for SharePoint at Microsoft specializing in SharePoint Performance and Publishing. He is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist - MCTS: SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance

This is your chance to break past the learning curve and be ahead in your career. Budgets are tight and several people fail to make the case to get adequate training or experimentation time to stay current.

These weekend classes are a great way to build a solid foundation to be confident and capable with SQL Server. They also provide a great way to get to know the other SQL Server professionals in the area.

Training of this quality and this depth and length does not come around for free very often.  This will be the only class from Mike Hotek this year.

The course material will follow this book: SQL Server 2012 Data Design and Retrieval by Mike Hotek

You may purchase the class text book http://championvalleypress.com/data-design-and-retrieval.aspx.

You may still reserve your seat http://hoteksql.eventbrite.com.

For those of you who have signed up already, can't wait to see you and here are a few things to remember:

• In the training lab your cell phones will have very limited signal.
• Mark has graciously made wireless available, but that many laptops is a challenge for the access point.
• There are vending machines and microwaves upstairs.
• We break for lunch and go off site. This is a great time to get to know your classmates.
• If you bring your own coffee and snacks, please be respectful of the space we have been granted for the class and cleanup after yourself.

Class dates: April 6, 13, 20 & 27 (all four Saturdays)

Class Times: 9 AM -  4 PM

We reiterate, no March or April monthly meeting as we are doing the Saturday classes. See you in April if you are taking the classes. 

We are delighted to announce we are cancelling the monthly meetings in March and April.

We are happy about this because in replacement, we are offering you the return of the Weekend SQL Server classes! Instead of a small lecture, we're offering you 24 hours of solid SQL Server 2012 education!

Seating is limited, so reserve your spot here:  http://hoteksql.eventbrite.com

Mike Hotek is donating his Saturdays in April to the SQL community!

 The weekend SQL classes are back for a SQL Server 2012 round! For the veterans who have drank from this particular flavor of fire hose, we've missed you and we can't wait to see you again.

 We are excited to be able to invite you all back for four Saturday classes in April. They will be April 6, 13, 20 & 27 from 9 am to 4pm.

 For those of you who have not yet experienced Mike Hotek's training, what ever your experience level you will benefit from spending time talking about SQL Server with someone who has tirelessly worked with this product since its very beginning in more industries and sizes of environments and countries than you can imagine. 

The class is designed to go through the first book in a series of four. The book will be available just in time for the class. Check here at the end of March for class materials: http://www.championvalleypress.com/books.aspx

SQL Server 2012 Data Design and Retrieval

Courseware Modules:

Installation and Configuration

• SQL Server Tools

• Creating Databases
• Database Structure
• Contained Databases  

• Designing Tables
• Data Modeling
• Data Types
• Hierarchy
• Constraints
• FileStream
• FileTable

• Storage Engine Internals

• Data Manipulation
• Manipulating Hierarchies
• Bulk Loading Data
• Change Tracking

• Transaction Management
• Locking
• Isolation Levels
• Row Versioning

• Data Retrieval
• Joins
• Subqueries
• Aggregates

• Advanced Data Retrieval
• Set Operators
• Table Expressions
• Window Functions
• XML

• Spatial Objects
• Spatial Calculations
• Geography Data

• Indexes
• Clustered
• Non-Clustered
• Filtered
• Covering
• Statistics
• Index Internals
• Forwarding Pointers
• Indexing Hierarchies
• XML Index
• Selective XML Index
• Spatial Indexes
• Index Maintenance
• Columnstore Indexes

• Full text index
• Word Breakers and Stemmers
• Stop Lists
• Document Properties
• Querying Full Text Data
• Semantic Search

• Partitioning
• Functions
• Schemes
• Partitioning Tables and Indexes
• Modifying Partition Functions
• Manipulating Partition Tables

Topic:  Data Warehouse Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Bio:  David Stein is a Data Warehouse Architect with RealPage Inc. in Carrollton, TX. He’s worked in SQL Server Business Intelligence for almost a decade in many roles as both a consultant as well as a corporate employee.  He’s designed Data Warehouses from scratch as well as saved projects in serious jeopardy.

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

6:30 PM Meet & Greet | 7 PM Presentation

Happy 2013 everybody! Welcome back to another year with the Fort Worth SQL Server Users Group! We're happy to crack open the new year's lecture series with Mike Hotek. He always brings crazy amounts of industry experience and knowledge to the discussion.

Topic:

A large number of people, including many at Microsoft have bought into the marketing BS called “Big Data”.  When you hear “big data”, everyone automatically assumes that you have to do this in some other database platform being foisted on IT.  The marketing myth that many have bought into is that SQL Server can’t handle “big data”.  This session will walk you through the architecture and build out of a real world data warehouse, built entirely with SQL Server, which is currently in excess of 10 Exabytes.

Bio:

Mike Hotek is the Senior Business Intelligence Architect for CBRE. He has been building SQL Server systems and database management best practices for almost 20 years having worked with thousands of companies and on the largest, most complicated platforms in the world. Mike has delivered hundreds of sessions and training events around the world and has published numerous articles along with 8 books. He is currently working on a four book series on SQL Server 2012.

Contact URL: http://www.ChampionValleySoftware.com

See you there!  Location