I didn't attend every session, obviously - I'm no Jack Bauer (or Thomas LaRock) - but I did happen to catch all the sessions I wanted and each one was fantastic. Regardless of how much you think you know about a given topic, there always seems to be at least one thing you pick up that improves your practical knowledge.
If you didn't happen to catch them live - yes, the speakers were live - the recordings are scheduled to be made available for a limited time on the main PASS website in mid-November. Kudos to all involved, the production value was high - everything went smoothly on the technical end with slides, video, and audio smartly delivered.
Recap
Here's a (very) brief review of the sessions I attended...
Delivering Good Performance Consistently with SSIS - John Welch
(This was hour 4 - about the time when the first layer of the "conspiracy" would have been revealed...)
An exceptionally good (especially given the time constraints) coverage of "what can be slow" in SSIS. From parallelism in the Control Flow to diagnosing memory (buffer) issues in the Data Flow - a soup to nuts review of what you need to watch in SSIS performance-wise, what "easy" arrangements within a package typically lead to poor performance, and simple techniques to improve efficiency. John must have also seen my name somewhere in the list of the hundreds of participants, because he gave my Kimball Method SCD component a shout out right at the end. Thanks, John!
Reporting from Analysis Services Cubes Using Excel 2007 - Peter Myers
(This is hour 14 - not being Jack Bauer with a portable caffeine drip, I would now be completely confused about who the newly identified criminal syndicate is, and what nefarious plot they were 15 minutes away from executing..)
A very good look at how to get at Analysis Services Cubes using Excel 2007 - and even a look at what publishing those spreadsheets into Excel Services on Sharepoint can deliver. I definitely picked up some tips on little things you can do contextually within a PivotTable to hide members of hierarchies, filter, and group data.
Data Warehousing: Laying the Foundation to Success - Erik Veerman
(This is hour 15 - rogue states using nuclear weapons have to be part of the plot now - ah, yes a DW topic...)
Great coverage of the technical side of starting to understand Data Warehousing. IMO, that's the "easy half" - there's the political side to manage as well, but I'm not sure you can put that process on a slide deck... The newer part for me was the discussion on server infrastructure. Not something I've had to dive into yet, but sooner or later I'm going to have to - if just to have a meaningful conversation with my hardware/infrastructure guys. Read up on Microsoft's Fast Track reference architectures for yourself.
Building a Better Blog - Steve Jones(This is hour 17 - just about the time when Jack gets blindsided by a "personal" angle in the plot...)
I was really looking forward to this one. Personally, I think my blog needs some work - or should, as everything has room for improvement. I also like to hear non-technical talks too - we shouldn't always get all wrapped up in APIs, performance monitoring, and coding patterns. Unfortunately, the links on PASS's site for this session didn't work! Live Meeting claimed the meeting info wasn't recognized, or I wasn't authorized. :( It took me 15 minutes to hunt down an alternative link (bad searching protocol by me?)
Back to the content! Excellent, again! Steve gave plenty of great guidelines and examples of what he considers good ways to improve your blog. Steve's point of view was primarily that you should use your blog not to educate others, but simply chronicle your career, giving potential (future) employers more "meat" to review. The many reasons I'm blogging do overlap (educate, chronicle, participate), so I plan to make some changes based on his thoughts:
- Expand my blog roll (damn, that'll be long)
- See if I have Pingbacks enabled
- Try to write less per post :)
(This is hour 19 - now and only now is the final depth and horror of the full conspiracy revealed after having chased and dismantled three or four paper tigers...)
Not to diminish Brian's presentation - it was just fine - but I've seen it before :) I knew that going in, but it's a good idea to review content once you think you understand it - you'll pick up more. In my case - using HASHBYTES... I'd seen that before, but I need to look into it again. For me - that probably means looking at incorporating it into my Kimball SCD component.
What a Great Deal
Wow - that was a great set of presentations, and I know the ones I didn't see were just as good. The moderators said that "select presentations" will be available on PASS by September 9th, and all of the content will be available "for a limited time" in November/December. Review the session list and keep a watch on the PASS site for your opportunity to catch sessions that you should have to pay for!
(Now, if this had been an actual season of 24, I would have seen every episode.)
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