SQL Saturday in Iowa

SQL Saturday in Iowa has come and gone. It was a great conference, and it’s a shame that we can’t get a day like this somewhere in the Chicago – Milwaukee – Madison region. Hopefully soon.

But back to the SQL Saturday. Thanks to the East Iowa SQL User Group for putting this all together, bringing in the speakers, finding the venue, lining up the sponsors, and doing all the little things that make an event like this possible. There were only a few minor glitches with equipment (projectors mostly). Registration was probably the easiest I’ve ever seen for any event. Food and beverages were both tasty and plentiful all day long. And the sponsors were only there for the event, not to sell products.

But the best part of the event was the content. I can only comment on the sessions I attended but I’m sure that the rest were equally as good. I have a list of the sessions offered in an earlier post.

I didn’t go to Alex Kuznetsov’s sessions since I’ve seen them. The first session I went to was Janis Griffin’s Tuna Helper. She went over a process that Confio uses to spot issues on servers using wait types and DMVs. Next up were the three BI sessions that Jessica Moss presented. The session on reports was basic, probably because that’s the part of the BI stack I’m most familiar with. And her session on Database Dimensions in SSAS had a glitch with an overheated projector and became more of an overview of SSAS itself, which was fine with me as I know very little about SSAS. The session on SSIS was great. I may finally be getting a handle on data warehousing dimensions and facts thanks to her.

Tim Ford also had an issue with a bulky projector so his session wasn’t as informative as it would have been. But I have the links to his blogs where he’ll have his scripts. They’ll come in handy. And finally Louis Davidson gave his second session of the day, on database design patterns. This was my first chance to see Louis present live. He’s a great speaker.