Want one of us to present at your user group? First, pick from our favorite presentations, then contact us and let us know what dates you’ve got open. We wish we could travel to every user group meeting, but unless we’ve got other events going in the area, we’ll need to present remotely using LiveMeeting or WebEx.
Brent Ozar’s Sessions
Blitz! One Hour SQL Server Takeovers
You’re minding your own business in your corner office – well, no, you’re a DBA, so it’s just your cubicle – when somebody says, “Did you know about this SQL Server over here?” Suddenly, you have to find out what the server’s doing, how it was set up, and whether things are working correctly. In this real-time session, Brent will show you how he tackles unknown servers in 60 minutes to find problems, take an inventory, and set the server up for easier management down the road.
Video & Links – SpeakerRate Ratings
Virtualization and SAN Basics for Database Administrators
Rated one of the top 10 sessions at the PASS Summit 2010! These two technologies can make a very big – and very bad – difference in how your SQL Server performs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the real, honest lowdown from a virtualization administrator, a SAN administrator, and a DBA? Wouldn’t it be even better if one person had done all three, and could give you the pros and cons of each point of view? That person is Brent Ozar, a Microsoft Certified Master who’s been there and done that.
- Three things you should NEVER do when virtualizing SQL Server
- Three things you should ALWAYS do when using SQL on a SAN
- Three metrics you should always capture on virtual & SAN-connected SQL Servers
Virtualization Resources – SAN Resources – SpeakerRate Ratings
DRP 101: Learn The Difference Between Your Log and Your Cluster
Rated one of the top 10 sessions at the PASS Summit 2009! Developers and accidental DBAs: if you know more about how SQL Server handles crashes and disasters, you’ll be able to make a better decision about how to prepare. In this session, Brent will cover all of SQL Server’s backup and high availability options at a high level, including clustering, log shipping, mirroring, replication and more. He’ll show the pros and cons of each, and teach you how to pick the right method for your application.
Attendees will learn:
- The difference between high availability and disaster recovery
- Real-world drawbacks of each solution
- Which methods complement each other for better protection
Tuning T-SQL Step by Step
If execution plans look like subway maps of foreign cities, this session is for you. Brent will turn SQL Server inside out by making YOU role-play as the SQL Server engine. He’ll feed you one query at a time, make you write your own execution plans in plain English, and then show how SQL Server draws out execution plans. You’ll learn how sorts and joins rely on indexes, and get your first glimpse into why statistics are so important. No tuning experience necessary, but you do need to understand how to write SELECT statements with joins.
Attendees will learn:
- Why indexes speed up queries even when we don’t need sorted data
- Why “ORDER BY” can cause TempDB problems
- The effects of parameter sniffing
- How to use SET STATISTICS IO ON to tune queries with the wash/rinse/repeat process
SQL Server Performance Tuning for Race Car Drivers
Times are tough even for the best drivers: Helio Castroneves is dancing for money and Danica Patrick is doing ads for what appears to be an adult services company. Maybe it’s time to switch careers, and Brent has just the thing. Use your hard-earned knowledge of high speeds, million-dollar hardware and surviving disastrous crashes to become a SQL Server performance tuner!
In this session, Brent will show you:
- Why Colin Chapman would check for indexes before adding new ones
- The importance of well-tested safety gear to performance tuning
- Why not monitoring your servers is like overdriving your headlights
- Just like races are lost in the pits, uptime records are lost during maintenance windows
Video – Demos & Links – SpeakerRate Ratings
The Top 10 Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale
You’ve heard it before: “It worked fine on my machine, but the users say it’s too slow.” Don’t blame the developers: they’re using SQL Server features that look great on paper, but in reality, they won’t scale up to production loads. Learn to recognize these common mistakes before they go into production, and be armed with easy fixes for:
- User-defined functions that go through too much data
- Triggers that perform business logic
- Cursors that process data row by row
Video & Links – SpeakerRate Ratings
Index Tuning with the DMVs
SQL Server is constantly watching queries and taking notes about what indexes could have made the queries – and which ones aren’t helping at all. Learn how to use the Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to build better indexes and dump the ones you don’t need.
Video & Links – SpeakerRate Ratings
Perfmon & Profiler 101
These two tools are the key to successful performance tuning. I’ll show you how to get started with these tools, how to slice and dice the results, and even how to data mine the results to look for interesting trends. Whether you like to monitor performance with native tools or third party utilities, knowing how the native tools work will help you get better results out of your tools.
Attendees will learn:
- Why Perfmon is like a Nissan GT-R’s dashboard
- What Perfmon counters to measure, and what they mean
- Four common performance symptoms and how to cure the problems
Video – Demos & Links – SpeakerRate Ratings
Tim Ford’s Sessions
Tips and Tricks for Administering SQL Server (Tim Ford)
Having had to support a large number of SQL Server instances as a solo DBA for many years I’ve developed a toolbox of scripts that I rely on to give me insight into disk space, database file growth, backup status, job status, and login management. Some of these I’ve shared on mssqltips.com, others are seeing the public light for the first time. Attendees go home with scripts they can immediately put to use in their organizations.
Disaster Recovery and High Availability for N00Bs (Tim Ford)
This session is targeted for those who have found themselves accidentally responsible for the SQL Server databases where they work, or are generally new to SQL Server. We’ll cover the basics of Backup and Restore processes as well as a high overview of HA architectures available including Database Mirroring, Clustering, Replication, and Log Shipping. Scripts will be provided for immediate use in your own environment as a take-away from this presentation.
Insight Into Your Indexes With DMVs (Tim Ford)
Identify and remdiate index fragmentation. Gather information about unused indexes that may be causing your instances unnecessary overhead and impacting performance. Even find out what indexes you may want to create to make your databases perform better: all with the use of SQL Server Dynamic Management Objects.
The Periodic Table of SQL Server DMOs (Tim Ford)
Learn how you can query Dynamic Management Views (and Functions) to troubleshoot performance issues, tune troublesome queries, learn the innermost secrets of your SQL Server instances, and capacity plan among other things. Tim pulls from his new project: The Periodic Table of DMVs as well as his sessions on DMVs at SQL Cruise to examine and discuss a wide variety of DMVs (and DMFs).
Top 10 SQL Mistakes and Mis-steps (Tim Ford)
Join this beginner-level session in which we’ll go over common mistakes made by new and seasoned SQL Server Professionals alike. Learn how to avoid these issues before they happen.
Tips for the Lazy (But Driven) DBA (Tim Ford)
Having had to support a large number of SQL Server instances as a solo DBA for many years I’ve developed a toolbox of scripts and arsenal of processes that I rely upon to give insight into disk space, file growth, backup status, Agent job outcomes, and login management. Some of these I’ve shared on various websites and blogs; others see the light of day for the first time in this session. Attendees leave the session with processes and code they can begin to use immediately.
Tips for the Lazy (But Driven) DBA (Tim Ford)
Having had to support a large number of SQL Server instances as a solo DBA for many years I’ve developed a toolbox of scripts and arsenal of processes that I rely upon to give insight into disk space, file growth, backup status, Agent job outcomes, and login management. Some of these I’ve shared on various websites and blogs; others see the light of day for the first time in this session. Attendees leave the session with processes and code they can begin to use immediately.
Jeremiah Peschka’s Sessions
The Database is Dead, Long Live the Database (Jeremiah Peschka)
If relational databases are so great, why are people talking about NoSQL? Shouldn’t we explore other ways to store and manipulate data? We’ll look at four scenarios – caching, session state, flexible data models, and batch processing – and discuss how traditional databases perform in each situation and what other options exist on the market. At the end of this session, attendees will have a better understanding of how different workloads perform in RDBMSes, best practices, and alternative storage solutions to make your life easier.
Rules, Rules, and Rules (Jeremiah Peschka)
Computers are governed by the rules of physics: electrons, drive heads, and disk platters can only move so fast. Database systems are built according to those rules: memory is faster than disk which is faster than the network. Database schemas and queries are built within the rules of database systems. You will hit the limitations of these rules. If you know what the rules are and why they are in place, you’ll know when it’s time to break them… and how to succeed.
Modeling Muddy Data (Jeremiah Peschka)
Unfortunately, the real world isn’t always as cut and dry as third normal form; sometimes things get muddy. What do you do then? This talk will examine the use of NULLs, sparse columns, XML data types, and other ways of storing data with a murky format. This presentation will introduce techniques for common data modeling problems and examine potential patterns and practices for working with flexible data modeling that can be immediately useful in real-world scenarios.
Fundamentals of SQL Server Internals (Jeremiah Peschka)
Want to know what makes SQL Server tick? Ever wonder what SQL Server is doing when you run a query? Ever wonder which parts of SQL Server are responsible for specific functionality? Want to know what a HOBT is? I can’t promise answers to every question, but I can set you on the path to knowledge about the inner workings of SQL Server.
Refactoring SQL Applications (Jeremiah Peschka)
Refactoring SQL is not like refactoring application code. This talk will cover proven SQL refactoring techniques that will help you identify where performance gains can be made, apply quick fixes, improve readability, and help you quickly locate places to make sweeping performance improvements. Jeremiah Peschka has years of hands on experience tuning SQL applications for performance, throughput, and concurrency.
Want Us to Present At Your User Group Meeting?
We’d love to! We can present any of these remotely at the drop of a hat. Here’s how to get us to present at your user group.
