Wednesday, February 22, 2012

So you wanna attend our SQL Rally 2012 Precon?


Chris Shaw and myself will be putting on a Pre-Con for the upcoming SQLRally in Dallas in May 2012. We are excited. I am excited. Here is a link to our Pre-con, so that you can check it out yourself.

The content that we have put together comes from trial and error in our day jobs. As well as having been packaged and presented in other forums, including SSWUG vConferences, SQL Saturday events, User Groups, and so on. We are proud of the content, and the ideas we have realized, and we simply want to share these with others.

It is our hope that thru the presentation of this information we can help you alter your day to day practices, become better at your job, and help us along with others realize how to be better at what we do. You would be amazed at the things I learn from you as I stand in front of an audience to teach; I end up learning a lot about myself and what I do or worse, don't do.

Taken directly from the abstract, you can see some of the topics that we will be discussing.

  • The “Why” or “How” questions that come up
  • why should we upgrade our servers
  • how much server power do we need
  • what is the best process to follow
  • how should we manage our releases
  • a checklist that has proven to foster stable database servers
  • database utilities to automate these checklist items
  • learning about change management options
  • disaster recovery options
  • gain an understanding of these tasks
  • leave the session with an ability to help improve systems back home
  • be armed with

o examples

o ideas

o suggestions

o actual code

o samples

o documentation

o templates

o other tools



This we will do thru presenting what we are calling sub sessions of informational topics that we have put together. Like I mentioned, some of these have been presented many times before in different venues, while some content will be seen for the first time at this event.

To give you an idea of what lies ahead, if you attend, we will start the day with an introduction to all that we will discuss. We will even open up some of the time to vote on several possible sub sessions we will have prepared. This means that we will have enough content to speak and teach for 10 or more hours, but allow you, the audience, to choose some of that content yourselves, at the onset of the event. It will all tie together as we traverse the tapestry of what it means to Be a DBA, and you will leave with a larger toolbelt of utilities than when you entered.

Our core content will be discussing a Checklist of tasks to do daily, weekly and monthly. A Utility Database that will empower you, arming you with valuable information to direct you activities. We will dig deeper with a sub session that discusses Data File Sizes and the importance of properly sizing your databases, as well as collecting the data you need to arm you properly to make valid decisions. An interactive sub session dealing with Disaster Recovery will allow you to interact with us and the audience to learn about DR and provide the best solution in several case studies we will all do together. Helping you get a handle on Release Management and various tools as well as processes you can implement to ease this process will be discussed. The day will finish up with the task we never actually get to; Documentation. We will show you various methods for documenting what we do as DBAs and you will leave with examples, templates, and so on to help you on Monday morning back at work.

I would suggest that you bring several things to this session. A jump drive to collect our code, demos, samples, templates, and so on. Paper to take notes with, adding vital pieces of information you think of and learn to add to your utility belt. A remembrance of your problems and solutions to these various topics, so that you can enlighten us with how you solved it in your past. As well as an ability to learn from us and others in the audience.

The goal of all these topics, all these demos, templates, etc. is to get your brain thinking and interacting with us, so that we can all become better Data Professionals. Allowing us all to come away from this session better armed to go back to our day jobs and excel.

Please, if you feel so inclined, sign up for our Pre-Con. Come and learn from us as we learn from you.



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