Putting on my first Pre-Con for #SQLSat104

While at PASS 2011 I had the inspiration to discuss the possibility of combining my speaking efforts with those of Chris Shaw (blog | twitter) on utility databases. I have been speaking for a while in various venues and most of the topics I have covered seem to float around this idea of utilities that help me as a DBA perform my day to day job, with an emphasis on monitoring, collecting baseline information and reporting on said information. You can check out some of the past presentations I have done in this blog post.

I have seen Chris present on Utility Databases and was impressed at his approach and solution to the problems he has faced. I approached him and discussed us speaking together, combining our efforts (read:climbing on his coat tails and enjoying the ride). He was positive in the receipt of the idea. Various discussions have ensued since that day.

We have created, what we think, will be an enjoyable day of sharing of our experiences, actual code, actual data, actual demos and actual templates that you can use in your organization to solve some of the problems we all face as DBAs. There is no right or wrong way to perform these steps, and every implementation will vary based on your knowledge, skill, time and need. But these ideas will be things we have done, are doing, and continue to do to support our own organizations. We hope that they will help you out in yours as well.

Expanding on the idea of a Utility Database, we want to help you create a Utility Belt with tools you can use. Think of it like the Utility Belt that Batman wears. I would imagine there are some great gadgets in that belt that help in various situations. We hope to populate your Utility Belt with some of the tools we have learned and love to use ourselves.

We will start the day with some list of tasks to perform daily/weekly/monthly. Hoping that these ideas will get your brain juices flowing and thinking of how they may be implemented in your shop. We will discuss Chris's Utility Database, my Data File Size collection and reporting system, new techniques with SQL Server 2012 features, and even delve into documentation (a much needed, yet much ignored topic).

It's my hope that you will come away from this day long discussion with some tools that you can take home with you and use in your shop. Take them, tweak them, mash them into your square peg hole and make them work for you, just like Chris and I have done to gain this knowledge ourselves. We all end up learning from each other, sharing with each other and helping each other. Together we can make our jobs and our own effectiveness that much better.

Come see us. Come learn from us. Come share your experiences with us and teach us as well.

Homepage for the SQL Saturday Colorado Springs event is found here.

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/104/eventhome.aspx

Homepage for the pre-con we are putting on can be found here.

http://sqlsat104utilitybelt.eventbrite.com/