This post is part 3 of at least a 4 post article on my First Timer view of the SQL PASS Summit as I experienced it personally. If you missed the first posts, click here.
Day 3
Day 3 for me, Day 2 of the Summit (Thursday) rolls around and today I’ve gotten up a little earlier to make it on the shuttle over to the convention center for the free breakfast at the Summit. Yesterday I mentioned in my Day 2 summation that the hot breakfast from the Marriott was a better choice. Don’t get me wrong, the breakfast at the Summit in the dining hall was OK, with typical cereal, yougurt and continental items, but it just wasn’t as good as the hot fresh breakfast items at the hotel. So to me, in the end, the 10 block walk is worth it if your hotel is providing a hot breakfast for free too…
Anyway, on to the Summit Day 2 Keynote. Plus, it’s SQL Kilt Day, so Bill Graziano, PASS Executive VP, is in a kilt, like another 30 or so other attendees, to introduce Day 2 and Quentin Clark (Corporate Vice President, SQL Server Database Systems Group Microsoft Corp) as the keynote speaker.
Quentin provided a second keynote comprised of a sales pitch. This time focused mostly on what he called the “Fantastic 12”, the top 12 important features in SQL Server 2012. Quentin is an entertaining speaker and also brought out quite a few Microsoft technologists and experts to cover the “Fantastic 12” in the keynote:
#1 Required 9’s & Protection – SSIS is a server, AlwaysOn, and HA for StreamInsight
#2 Blazing Fast Performance improvements to the SQL Engine, SSIS, and SSAS (and the new ColumnStore index (really sweet for DWH))
#3 Rapid Data Exploration
#4 Managed, Self-Service BI – Power View, PowerPivot
#5 Credible Consistent Data – Data Quality Services; Master Data Services
#6 Organizational Compliance Auditing; User-defined server roles
#7 Peace of mind – Distributed Replay Utility; System Center Advisor / MPs; Premier Mission Critical support
#8 Scalable data warehousing – Optimized & pre-tuned appliances from multiple vendors
#9 Fast time to solution
#10 Extend Any Data, Anywhere – Drivers for PHP, Java, Hadoop; ODBC drivers for Linux & CDC for SSIS & Oracle
#11 Optimized productivity SQL Server Data Tools (“Juneau”) for both OLTP and BI; deployment + targeting “freedom”
#12 Scale on demand AlwaysOn; Elastic Scale & Federation
Again, lots of demos and a lot of time spent talking about the Parallel Data Warehouse turn-key data warehousing hardware platform. At least it was a good amount of information shoved into the space.
To see the entire keynote for yourself, click this link.
The rest of the day was just like the first day, filled with sessions and Expert Pods and a quick stop into the SQL Server Clinic put on by Microsoft and staffed with escalation team and sqlCAT team members to answer tough questions you brought with you. Unfortunately, I have tough questions about merge and transactional replication issues and there was no one in the clinic to answer them. The recommended I post them to them to the MS forums or Connect. I did get to take a bag full of SWAG for my SQL PASS Chapter though, so that was a #win.
Thursday evening was the night of the Microsoft sponsored Community Appreciation Party held across the street from the convention center at Gamewerks. This event was awesome. A huge sportsbar/arcade cover a massive amount of square footage. There was free food and drinks again of course. And then, to spur networking, there was a contest where you had to find 5 new people, get to know them a bit, and have them put their name and email addy on a card. I met some neat people, played a bunch of games, and found out the next day that I’d won in that contest. A new xBox360 Kinect! #winning #sqlpass rocks!
Back to the hotel instead of where a lot of people go, SQL Karaoke, but it was a great night anyhow. The walk back to the hotel was chilly, but I called my wife and we chatted the entire walk back. #morewinning
Little work for the company to wind down and some shut eye to prepare for the final day….was almost sad it was this close to the end…..
-Patrick
