Tag: SQL Saturday

Road to Success at SQL Saturday #159…

Kanas City Sql Saturday #159

So my adventure begins in May of 2012…

Rick Krueger ( b | t ) and I were talking about SQL Server and decided that it was about time that we became active members in the SQL Family. Our first attempt at bringing the SQL Family together was not as big of hit as we had hoped, but we found that we both had a passion and the drive to do more. This is when we decided that speaking at SQL Saturday #149 Minnesota was our next goal.

One day, in June, Rick says to me, “Dave, I think we should submit two abstracts to Iowa and Kansas City.” After thinking about it for about 3-4 seconds, I quickly agreed. I felt that this would be the perfect opportunity for us to meet some new SQL Server friends, and get speaking time. Plus if we were able to speak at Kansas City and Iowa events, we would surely get into the Minnesota event. So Rick and I submitted two abstracts to both SQL Saturday #159 Kansas City and SQL Saturday #161 East Iowa.

Now the thought for submitting two abstracts was to better our odds of getting a single spot. We didn’t anticipate both Kansas City and Iowa accepting both abstracts. After the rush of getting our abstracts selected wore off, we quickly realized our work was cut out for us. We had summer coming up, which in Minnesota is the nicest 2 months of the year, kids graduations, weddings, teaching, and family life to maintain. And now on top of all that, we had to prepare two full sessions.

I will say that it was a lot more work that I had ever imagined, but it was all worthwhile. We spent a lot of late nights working on slide decks, demos, and speaking scripts. We enlisted some great friends at the office to listen and give great feedback: Eric ( b | t ), Brandon ( b | t ), Bob ( t ), Rich and Scott thanks again! We made changes to our session as late as the drive from Minnesota down to Kansas City. But one of the last changes we made took our session from a 10 and cranked it up to 11.

The Friday before SQL Saturday #159, Rick, my wife, and I left for Kansas City. We made it to Kansas City just about 2:00 PM and attempted to meet up with the SQL Saturday #159 speakers on a BBQ crawl. This should have worked in theory; however I had some navigational difficulties, which prevented us from making the entire BBQ Crawl. However all was not lost, we made it to the final stop at the Woodyard BBQ joint. We met Jason Kassay ( b | t ), Chris Shaw ( b | t ), Andre DuBois ( t ), and Bill Fellows ( b | t ). Great group of guys, I am looking forward to hanging out with them again at future SQL events.

Dave and Rick at SQL Saturday #159

Later Friday night we went to the Screenland Theater for a speakers dinner. If you have never been to the Screenland theater, I would recommend it, lots of nostalgia and interesting architecture. It was at the dinner party where I was able to meet Meagan Longoria( t ), Chris Price ( t ), David Klee ( b | t ), Andy Galbraith ( b | t ), Steve Wake ( b | t ), and John Morehouse ( b | t ).
All these people were super nice and we had great conversations.

SQL Saturday #159 Kansas City was spectacular. The event organizers did an outstanding job! The Rooms were great, there were plenty of helpful people, the lunch was delicious, and the smoothie break was a nice touch. Over all it was a top notch event, kudos to the entire team!

And… Rick and I  successfully gave our first two sessions!!!

It wasn’t until the next day driving back to Minnesota that I realized what Rick and I were able to accomplish. If were to do it over, I would like to say I would do things different, but that’s just not my style.

I would like to thank both my wife Kristin, and Rick’s wife for putting up with us during this crazy adventure.

Iowa SQL Saturday #161

Next stop SQL Saturday #161 East Iowa…

T-SQL Tuesday #32 – A Day in the Life

Thank you to Erin Stellato ( b | t ) for providing this month’s topic, where we were asked to track what we did on Wednesday, July 11th.

Database Developer

Overall I had a pretty normal day in the life of a database developer. My day started around 7:00 am with reviewing tasks and bugs that are assigned to me in TFS (Team Foundation Server), followed by replying to emails. Then getting re-acquainted with where I left myself from the previous night in Management Studio. T-SQL Tuesday

Around 9:00 AM a QA resource presented a bug where a stored procedure was not copying data between tables. What I found was an additional step was added to an insert stored procedure that was attempting to short circuit functionality, when it found a like match. This procedure was working so good, that it only inserted one record… ever… It turned out to be an issue where two columns made up the unique key, and the second column was missing from this check. I added the missing column into the stored procedure to put it back in  business.

Shortly after 10:30 AM, and a quick scrum meeting, I started training another DBA resource on a few stored procedures that I had previously written. This DBA had been tasked with adding  functionality to support new business objectives. Around this same time I worked with an application developer to add functionality in another stored procedure to meet middle tier requirements.

After/during a quick lunch at my desk, I began to review a massive business objective which would eventually output to a Reporting Services Report. This was short lived, when a QA resource discussed an issue with performance of an SSIS Package used to move dimensional data into a Data Mart.

Around 1:00 PM this performance bug was prioritized as critical and I spent the remainder of my day working on a fix. The problem I found in the SSIS package was the shear volume of data coupled with the number calls to an insert stored procedure via an OLE DB Command Transformation. After a couple tweaks to a stored procedure, and a couple new tasks in the SSIS package, performance was significantly improved.

It was now 6:00 PM and time to wrap up my work for today, however the day was not over yet, now it was time to get some dinner and talk SQL Saturday. Rick Krueger ( b | t ) and I will be co-presenting at both SQL Saturday #159 Kansas City and SQL Saturday #161 Iowa City. Rick and I worked on: networking strategies, presentation content, and changing our abstract to get accepted in MN.

After I got home, I decided to review an article that I found on SQL Server Central, which is relevant to our presentations. http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2722/sql-server-report-server-2008-r2-execution-log-reports/. Great post from Scott Murray ( b | t )

Kansas City and East Iowa Here We Come…

Rick Krueger ( b | t ) and I are going to Kansas City and East Iowa.
Why you say…
Well let me tell you… We were fortunate enough to have our abstracts selected for both SQL Saturday events, we are also submitting for SQL Saturday #149 in our home state of Minnesota.

At SQL Saturday #159 in Kansas City we were notified that two of our abstracts had been selected. Currently we are scheduled to present Freaky Fast Development Tips in Database Development – Room: Room 4 at 1:00 PM. Then we follow that up with SSRS: Reporting on Reports – Business Intelligence – Room: Room 3 at 2:30.

SQL Saturday #159 Schedule

Then one week later at SQL Saturday #161 in East Iowa we are scheduled to present Freaky Fast Development Tips in Room 3 – Room: 2520B (Conference Room) at 3:30 PM.

SQL Saturday #161 Schedule

If you are going to either event, stop by and say hi, check out our sessions, we love to talk and look forward to meeting you. Hope to see you in Kansas City, East Iowa, and possibly Minnesota

Freaky Fast Database Development Tips

Join Rick and Dave on this most excellent adventure as they teach you how to get more work done in less time. Leave your checkbook at home, because this is all about maximum productivity with minimum budget. Leave with Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio shortcut keys, extensions, macros, and add-ins. We guarantee you will see something you haven’t seen before, or your money back. Co-Presenter: Rick Krueger (@DataOgre)

SSRS: Reporting on Reports

Business Intelligence gets a lot of press these days, but do you often wonder to yourself as you are writing a report, ‘Who is going to use this’? Learn about the rich information that SSRS is already capturing for you about your reports: who is running them and how often, how long do they take to execute, how much time is spent in data retrieval vs rendering, which parameters were passed in, and more… Co-Presenter: Rick Krueger (@DataOgre)

Inspired by David Klees ( b | t ) blog post Speaking in Kansas City and Iowa City! whom will also be presenting at both events with Andy Galbraith ( b | t ).