亲爱的日记 - 第2天在SQL Pass Summit 2009

2009年帕斯峰会在西雅图的又一个伟大的日子。对我来说，最精彩的是让23位SQL Server MVP在刚刚发行的《SQL Server MVP Deep dive》一书上签名。所有版税将捐赠给http://www.WarChild.org慈善机构。参加会议的书店150本全部售出。这是一本伟大的书，也是一项伟大的事业。这一天以“SQL PASSion奖”开始，获奖者包括Allen Kinsel(北美)和Charley Hanania(国际)等不知疲倦的志愿者。整个PASS组织建立在志愿者模式的基础上，PASS峰会是对从分会到董事会志愿者工作的见证。作为SQL Server的独立用户组，能够成为PASS的一员是一种荣幸。如果你还不是会员，现在就加入吧，网址是http://www.sqlpass.org。主讲人是微软SQL Server商业智能解决方案的总经理Tom Casey。 He outlined the new Self-Service BI solution in Office 2010, Sharepoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2. Amir Netz gave a demo of Excel 2010 with PowerPivot, the new Add-In and showed the 100 million rows demo that is now famous. The secret is in the column compression ("Vertipaq") that limits the local file to 133 MB in this case and allows sub-second sorting and filtering. The output is impressive especially using SharePoint 2010, SilverLight 3.0 and a touch-screen on the Business Analysts machine. Excellent visualization especially with the new Carousel view that looks like a 3D Rolodex online. Very cool. Next session was "DBA's behaving badly...Worst Practices" by Rod Colledge. Instead of walking through best practices, Rod gave us the other side of the coin which we have all experienced and hopefully, have learned to avoid. Rod volunteered to proof-read the MVP Deep Dives book mentioned above, so he deserves a lot of credit for that thankless job. After lunch and the book signing, I attended Louis Davidson's session on Database Design. As always, Louis made it entertaining and funny, as well as informative. Normalization and Denormalization. I liked the slide in the middle entitled "Brief Laugh Break...". Everyone did laugh. I will have to use that idea. I then took a break and experimented with the PowerPivot feature of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Excel 2010 in the Microsoft lab room. It was a nice way to escape the hubub of the conference while still focusing on technology. The best was saved for last with Buck Woody from Microsoft on the Data Collector and Policy Based Management for monitoring SQL Servers. Not only technically detailed but also hilarious. If you have ever attended a presentation by Buck, you will know what I mean. If you haven't, make sure you do in the future. After answering a question on Facets and why you would use the @ID property instead of the @Name property, Buck just turned around and said "Look, if we didn't have it, you'd want it so we put it in!". You had to be there. His irreverent style encourages some ribbing from the audience too - "How long did it take to come up with that awful shade of green for your screen background?" was one question. "That's your last question" was Buck's reply. I am looking forward to the Microsoft party tonight at GameWorks in downtown Seattle where we can hang out with 2000 new friends. Should be fun. cheers Brian