SQL Saturday #45 – Louisville, KY

I need to get better at blogging about my experiences presenting at SQL Saturday so I’m writing this one on my way home. I had a great time in Louisville, even though it was VERY cold. It was 7 degrees Fahrenheit when I left the hotel Saturday morning. I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, that’s just plain cold.

The weekend started off with a great pre-event dinner at an Irish Pub called the Irish Rover. I’d say there were 15 or 20 people there split between two tables and I had a great time chatting with and getting to know Dave Fackler and his wife Dianna, Arie “AJ” Jones, Kathi Kellenburger, Louis Davidson, and of course event organizer and chapter leader Malathi Mahadevan. There were many others there as well.

The event was held on the University of Louisville campus, a fantastic venue. This is the 2^nd SQL Saturday I have attended held at a college and I recommend it. Classrooms with built-in projectors set up for presenting make a big difference. I got there a little late so I missed the keynote, given by a professor from the university. But I did attend AJ’s session during the first hour on Change Data Capture. He did a great job and it was useful as I have not yet used that feature. I did cut out a bit early because my first session was up next.

My morning session was the talk “Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects” (i.e. Data Dude). This is only the 2^nd time I have given this one but I thought it went pretty well. I especially appreciated the participation I got from John Dempsey, who has used the product quite a bit. As usual, I learned something from the participants during the talk so that was great. I did get some good constructive feedback on my reviews and I will certainly incorporate it the next time I give it (which happens to be next week at SQL Saturday in Houston).

After my session, I went back to the main room and had lunch (a great box lunch from Jason’s Deli) and had a great chat with Tanya Joseph of Red Gate about database source control. She was of course interested in my VS 2010 session because they have a competing suite of products. I was interested as well because to get the real power of the VS 2010 projects, you need Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate, which is a bit pricey for some of my clients. So I am interested in alternatives. I also had a great time chatting with Allen White, Tom LaRock, Sarah Barela, Kathi Kellenburger, Louis Davidson, and many others throughout the day. I am sure I am missing someone.

My afternoon session was also well attended. It is titled “Become Bilingual! Oracle for the SQL Server DBA”. I have been surprised how popular this session is. I guess given the realities of the economy, there are a lot of DBA’s out there having to wear two hats, or at least work with their counterparts on other platforms. This is the 4^th time I have given this one so I felt like it was a bit more polished than the other. As usual, there was a mix of SQL DBA’s, developers, and even an Oracle DBA or two in attendance.

The last session of the day I attended was Kathi Kellenburger’s “Separation of Duties” session. It was based on the separation of duties framework that can be downloaded from CodePlex. This is a very big deal to a lot of my clients so I was excited to see what they had done. It looks very promising. The one comment I did make to Kathi and will repeat here is that getting a Microsoft white paper out about it out will be really important to gaining acceptance. DBA’s and consultants like myself will have to sell this and a Microsoft endorsement will help a lot.

As usual, there were many other sessions I would have liked to attend. But I always seem to get caught up in chatting with attendees, vendors, and other speakers and miss out. Many thanks to Malathi and the Louisville team for putting on a great event. It was well run and I had a great time.