What's New in SQL 2019? at the Santa Fe SQL Server User Group

Hi Santa Fe! My first remote presentation for the Santa Fe SQL Server UG was on "What's New in SQL Server 2019?" Thanks to my friend Adrian Mee for organizing and reaching out so that we can line up this meeting, happy to participate in another group in the US South Central region. Thanks to the great crowd in Santa Fe that joined us for lunch and to learn more about SQL Server 2019!

The slidedeck is available for download here, with many links inside. Any referenced "toolbox" labs are here.

Hey @santafesql! Getting started soon.

I love this guy's beard on the left.
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— William Assaf (@william_a_dba) February 13, 2020

Ethics in Modern Data presentation at SQLSaturday Austin BI Edition 2020

Excited to launch another new presentation, the first co-presented with my wife, on Ethics in Modern Data. We'll explore the ethical considerations around historical bias, ethics in analysis and data collection, and disparate impact, with tons of well-documented case studies and examples.

This is an important topic that lives at the crossroads of both of our careers, my wife's career in organizational psychology and human resources, my career in data, and our joint passion for history and civil rights. The effort of researching, paring down, and rehearsing our presentation together as a couple has been an exciting first for us. It's important to understand that when dealing with bias, outcomes matter, intentions don't.

Thanks to the many of you who chimed in during the presentation, including with further reading and book recommendations for us all!

If you'd review any of the topics or case studies we covered, our slides and citations is available for download here.

Thanks to UserGroup.tv, a recording of our presentation is available here.

My wife also presented at Austin SQLSaturday BI 2020 on "Mastering your Resume & Interview: Tips to Get Hired" Saturday afternoon.

Ethics in Data @HRTact @william_a_dba #sqlsataustinBI pic.twitter.com/pf8r4Hpx3I

— Alicia Moniz (@AliciaMoniz) February 8, 2020

What's New in SQL 2019? at the Data Architecture Virtual User Group and Q&A followup

Thanks to all 180+ of you who joined the Data Architecture Virtual User Group for a hour all about SQL Server 2019! We reviewed everyone's favorite new features of SQL Server 2019. There were lots of questions, we got off onto tangents and use cases for SSRS, licensing, Hybrid Buffer Manager, Accelerated Database Recovery, and memory-optimized TempDB metadata. I answered some more questions below. 

Kudos to Kenny Neal for organizing!
Slidedeck here: 

• PowerPoint on Github here

• Any referenced "toolbox" labs are here

Q&A Followup:

1. The Database Experimentation Assistant uses Distributed Replay to do AB testing for the same workload on different hardware/platforms. Yes, as long as you can connect the application to the SQL Server instance using Windows Auth, you can do AB testing between on-prem or Azure VM instances of SQL Server and Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance, and only between SQL Server on Windows and SQL Server on Linux. More info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/dea/database-experimentation-assistant-overview?view=sql-server-ver15

2. More info on the announcement that you can get SQL Server for free with Software Assurance if it's an Availability Group replica in Azure VM's: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2019/10/30/new-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery-benefits-for-sql-server/

3. Yep, you can put the SSISDB in an Availability Group. You have been able to since 2012, it has gotten easier/better recently. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/integration-services/catalog/ssis-catalog?view=sql-server-2017#always-on-for-ssis-catalog-ssisdb

4. Would "OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY" help with BULK INSERTS? Parallel bulk inserts maybe. The sequential key hotspot PAGELATCH_EX issue is not I/O related (because it's  PAGELATCH_EX, not PAGEIOLATCH_EX), it's memory page related, and it's related to multiple parallel inserts, not just a lot of inserts. More info here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4460004/how-to-resolve-last-page-insert-pagelatch-ex-contention-in-sql-server.

5. Parallel Data Warehouse (now inside of the Analytics Platform System appliance) is in a different lifecycle than SQL Server... I'm afraid I don't follow it and I don't know which of these features is getting over into the PDW.

6. There was a question I think about about Resource Governor and Hybrid Buffer Pool or PMEM (Persistent Memory such as Intel Optane DC). I wasn't sure there was a connection at the time. Still pretty sure there isn't. The memory governed by the Resource Governor is not buffer pool memory but query execution grant memory.

7. Accelerated Database Recovery is a SQL Server 2019 feature - it doesn't depend on database compatibility level! Though you do store the ADR version store in the user database (in a filegroup of your choosing), it works with any database compatibility level. More about ADR here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-accelerated-database-recovery and also in our book, out soon!

8. Are there any drawbacks to enabling the memory-optimized tempdb metadata option? There are some fringe limitations in memory-optimized TempDB metadata that might be an issue for some, but probably not for most. Damir Matešić joined my webinar today and followed up with some more info on the limitations here: https://blog.matesic.info/post/Memory-Optimized-TempDB-Metadata.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to leave a comment here on this blog post or hit me up on twitter @william_A_dba.

Practical Personal Cybersecurity at Activate Conference Lightning Night

Photo: Shaniya W. of The Futures Fund.

Thanks to the organizers and many attendees of tonight's Activate Conference Lightning Night at LSU, the first of many series of short-format talks on technology put on by the creatives behind the annual Activate Conference in Baton Rouge.

It was great to see so many diverse faces from the Baton Rouge tech scene, including a big presence (and a teenage speaker!) from the Futures Fund!

You can download my slidedeck on Practical Personal Cybersecurity here on my Github.

Thanks again to everyone to was there, and a special thanks to Lynsey Gwin and Quinton Jason Jr for organizing! Please fill out their post-event survey here.

Hilarious and energetic @william_a_dba just gave a great talk on personal cybersecurity at @activ8conf pic.twitter.com/lt1ycqwccp

— Christine Assaf (@HRTact) January 15, 2020

"Human in the machine" by @hrtact was a powerful walk through our human responsibilities and needs in technology. Ended with a call for our creativity to enhance, not replace or outdate, real human communication. A strong addition to tonight's @activ8conf lineup of 10 speakers! pic.twitter.com/ng5suJrqTe

— William Assaf (@william_a_dba) January 15, 2020

What's New In SQL 2019? at the Little Rock, AR SQL Server User Group

Thanks to everyone who joined the Little Rock SQL Server User Group for a night all about SQL Server 2019! We got off into tangents and use cases for Big Data Clusters, columnstore, graph databases. We reviewed cool new syntax and patterns when they'll be used. We laughed at developers who use GUIDs as their clustered indexes. We had pizza, we had iced tea in a mayonnaise jar. Overall a great time!

Kudos to Mahanand and Chase from Vestcom for organizing!

Slidedeck here: https://github.com/williamadba/Public-Presentations/blob/master/BRSSUG/What's%20New%20in%20SQL%202019.pptx

Any referenced "toolbox" labs here: https://github.com/SparkhoundSQL/sql-server-toolbox

Thanks for all the kudos and great feedback on the presentation, will be incorporating it for as long as this presentation is topical!

"SQL Server Permissions and Security Principals" at SQLSaturday #560 Charlotte 2016

I'm proud to have been a part of SQLSaturday Charlotte 2016 this year, and happy that I was joined by a number of my colleagues from Sparkhound. We're establishing a presence in Charlotte and already have a couple big clients in the area, so Sparkies from both Baton Rouge and Charlotte joined me this weekend.

My presentation slide deck and demo scripts can be downloaded via the SQLSaturday website here.

The session is a ground-floor introduction to SQL Server permissions starting with the basics and moving into the security implications behinds stored procedures, views, database ownership, application connections, contained databases, application roles and more. This class is perfect for DBA's, developers and system admins, and we'll cover security basics for Azure SQL Database as well.

As a SQLSat organizer in Baton Rouge myself, I know exactly how much work and sweat equity it takes to put on a SQLSaturday event. The Charlotte team knows what they're doing after five years or so, and did a great job in 2016. Excellent work by the entire organizing team!

I Was Once a Very Crappy Carpenter + SQL Bolts to Buzzwords

Tonight I spoke to Dr. Alkadi's CMPS 411 class, which was hijacked by the Hammond .NET User Group onsite at Southeastern University! Thanks once again to Sparkhound who sponsored!

Here's the slide deck for my presentation, which combined two topics I wanted to talk about. The first, I Was Once a Very Crappy Carpenter, is about my personal journey early in my career from unmotivated "carpenter" to motivated "carpenter," which I think is relevant for folks in the IT industry at any experience level. The second, SQL Bolts to Buzzwords, is a ground-floor introduction to SQL Server database technology and core concepts about ACID fundamentals, data types, and disaster recovery that are crucial for developers/students to grasp.

Remember, stay away from floats and guids, stay in school, and eat your vegetables (pizza counts).

Thanks for attending, hope you enjoyed the presentation!

http://1drv.ms/1LB5fPE

Houston TechFest Presentation Downloads

Thanks for joining me at Houston TechFest 2015 at the NRG Center in Houston, TX! Big congrats to Michael and his crew of dedicated volunteers who once again put forward a first-rate free Saturday training event. I hope everyone enjoyed my presentations, our Sparkhound lunch session, our collar toss game at the Sparkhound booth, and all the general networking, professional development and learning all day.

As promised, here's the download links for my two presentations in the SQL Server track, which capped off a long day that featured six presentations by Assafs: two on SQL server, three in the Career Dev track and one more lunch session where I Trebek'ed a game of Sparkhound Jeopardy! in the Sparkhound Top Dog Challenge.

In room 313 I presented: SQL Server Security Principals and Best Practices at 2:10pm and SQL Server Admin Best Practices with DMV's at 4:10pm.

Here's the Onedrive folder for the slidedecks and sample scripts, including the labs we didn't cover in the DMV session: http://1drv.ms/1UO0Te3

See you next year!

Houston TechFest 2014: SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's

Awesome crowd this morning for my SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's presentation at Houston TechFest 2014, thanks very much for attending! There were some exceptionally useful questions raised today, great job to my audience.

Here is the .zip file as promised for my presentation slide deck and .sql files, including the new content for SQL 2014. Download here

"What You Need To Know About Being a DBA and What You Need To Know That You Don’t Know Yet"

Last night was a big success for the first annual Baton Rouge User Groups Networking Night, an all-user-groups invited event that saw members of the Baton Rouge SQL Server, .NET, Java, IT Pro, SharePoint, Women in IT user groups, plus members of user groups in Hammond, Lafayette and New Orleans (all about one hour away) join for a night of short-format speeches on career and professional development. We also were joined by a bunch of new folks from the public who'd never been to a user group meeting before - they picked a great first meeting to attend!

To the ~60 folks in attendance last night, the other seven speakers who made it a great event, our two Platinum SQL Saturday Baton Rouge sponsors, my all Sparkhound colleagues who joined me to speak, my wife who was volun-told into speaking from an HR perspective, and my friends in the user group community, thanks for being a part of that great event last night!

I was one of the eight community speakers and enjoyed presenting a thrown-together talk with a simple and concise title: "What You Need To Know About Being a DBA and What You Need To Know That You Don’t Know Yet". It was a ton of fun to present and share in the laughter!

It's a short slide deck and I pushed my 10-minute window a little bit, but thankfully our timer and stage-hook-master Jeremy Beckham from BCBS allowed some lenience.

If you are curious to see the "big list" of things you need to know to be a DBA, here's a link to download my PowerPoint slidedeck.

"SQL Server: Bolts to Buzzwords" presentation for the Hammond .NET User Group at Southeastern Louisiana University

One of my favorite groups to speak for (aside from the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group) is the Hammond .NET User Group at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. A mostly undergraduate crowd of enthusiastic future developers (and perhaps some developers-turned-DBAs, like myself) make for a fun audience that asks great questions.

Here's my slidedeck for an introductory presentation on databases and SQL Server, perfect for a college crowd, most of which hadn't completed a capstone project requiring a database solution. In fact, the first line of the slidedeck details the highly important lesson of how to pronounce "SQL" - as in, "sequel" NOT "ess kew el".

Here's the download link for the PowerPoint slidedeck

New Features of SQL 2008 R2 SP1 CTP Presentation at the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group

Here's my slide deck and three sample .sql files from the May 2011 Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group meeting where I presented on the new features of SQL 2008 R2 SP1 CTP.  Thanks for all who attended, see you next time!