Sql-Saturday

First Things First

Thanks to every who came to my session, Asnwering the Auditor’s Call with Automation. Slides and scripts are posted to my Github.

The Event!

This was Syracuse’s first SQL Saturday was held at the Onondaga County Public Library’s Central Library location, right downtown. This made it a bit of a “homecoming” for me. My first job out of college was across the street from this building and my colleagues and I used to eat lunch in the (no longer there) food court. I haven’t been to this part of downtown Syracuse since 2005, and downtown Syracuse at all since 2019. A lot has changed!

I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at the first-ever SQL Saturday Syracuse on September 7th, 2024. I will be presenting Answering the Auditor’s Call with Automation

As PASS Summit approaches this week, I’m re-reviewing my evaluations from SQL Saturday Boston and I’d like to give feedback about feedback.

Why Feedback?

Both speakers and event organizers depend upon getting feedback about every session delivered at SQL Saturday, Data Saturday, PASS Summit, or any of the user groups (in-person or virtual). This feedback is valuable to speakers and event organizers alike.

• For speakers, it helps us understand if we’re doing OK when we’re in front of the room, but more importantly we want to know what we can do better.
• For event organizers, it’s helpful in understanding what content attendees want to see. As a former event organizer and user group leader, I’ve even used that feedback to say “hey, we should invite this person to speak at a future meeting.”

Ratings on a scale of 1-5 are okay, but when you’re looking at product reviews on Amazon you aren’t just look at the stars, are you? The written reviews are what matter most when you’re making a decision about garden hoses or cheese graters. This is your opportunity to tell the speaker what works in their presentation and what doesn’t. This is information that can’t be conveyed via 4 stars or an emoji. We need actionable feedback.

First Things First

Thank you to everyone who attended my session “Answering the Automator’s Call with Automation.” My slide deck and demo code are now available on my Github.. This was a new session and I’m pretty happy with how it worked out. I wasn’t sure if it would “land,” even after doing my run-throughs at home. Now that I’ve delivered the material to real people and had a conversation or two about it with folks, I’m feeling much more confident.

I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Boston on October 14th, 2023. This year’s session is Answering the Auditor’s Call with Automation

As DBAs, we’re called on regularly to produce documentation for security & compliance audits. Being able to show who has what level of access to an instance is the minimum, but we’re often asked for more. Collecting this information and compiling it into something usable by auditors could take you hours or even days. But with automation, you can pull it all together in a matter of minutes while you’re getting that second cup of coffee from the kitchen.

This weekend was SQL Saturday Albany 2020. This was my third time attending the Albany event, my second time presenting, and my first virtual SQL Saturday. As always, Ed & his team did a terrific job with organizing it. Communication for both attendees and speakers was excellent, and as far as I can tell, everything ran very smoothly.

My Presentation

I presented Keys to a Healthy Relationship with SQL Server in the 3:30 PM session block. I’ve uploaded my slides to the SQL Saturday site. This is targeted primarily at application and database developers and I had a pretty good-sized turnout for the session. I promised folks answers to questions they asked in the session so let’s address those right now:

For the second consecutive year, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Albany 2020 on July 25th, 2020. I will be presenting “Keys to a Healthy Relationship with SQL Server” at 3:30 PM.

Abstract

Developers and DBAs have had a long, sometimes strained relationship. Some developers see DBAs as roadblocks standing in the way of getting their work shipped; some DBAs see developers as agents of chaos bent on ruining their perfect database environments.

A little while ago, Ray Kim (blog | twitter) asked a few folks who organize SQL Saturday events a few questions for his blog. The results are in and he’s compiled them all into one big post.

Check it out: What goes into organizing a #SQLSaturday? From the words of #SQLFamily

Another SQL Saturday Rochester is in the books - our eighth over the past nine years. Unlike past years, I actually am going to recap the event! Ray Kim (blog | twitter) beat me to the punch with his own recap post, but that’s to be expected - he’s a much faster writer than I!

February? Really?

I got some interesting reactions when I started telling people we’d have SQL Saturday in February this year. Rochester isn’t exactly known for its hospitable winter weather (unless you’re into that kind of thing). We’ve historically held the event later in the spring - we’ve done it in March, April, May and even June. What kind of madman schedules an event that depends upon people traveling from afar in the middle of winter?

Thank you to everyone who came out to see my presentation Keys to a Healthy Relationship with SQL Server at SQL Saturday Cleveland. I had a great time and I hope each of you learned at least one new thing.

Here are the links I mentioned in the session, as well as a couple that contributed to some of the things I mentioned.

• Slide deck uploaded to the SQL Saturday website
• Emoji as server object names
• Michael J. Swart’s (blog | twitter) Ten Percent Rule
• Telling Entity Framework to select specific columns
• RunAs Radio #673, Writing Good T-SQL in 2020 with Pam Lahoud and Pedro Lopes

Thank you to everyone who made SQL Saturday Cleveland possible - the organizers, sponsors, my fellow speakers, and all our attendees. Special shout-out to Eric Blinn (blog | twitter) and Paul Popovich (twitter) for finding a way, against all odds, to pull my name three times in the closing raffle.