I wanted to wish a big Congratulations to the new Executive Committee for PASS for next year. The New committee will be
Rushabh Mehta as President.
Bill Graziano as Executive Vice President of Finance
Rick Heiges as Vice President of Marketing
I hope them all the best in making a great next year for the PASS Community.
The official announcement can be found here.
http://www.sqlpass.org/Community/PASSBlog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/118.aspx
Volunteer Committee Last year at the Volunteer Outing.
This will be my 5th PASS summit this year. My second and final as a PASS Board of Director. Each PASS has been different for me but most have all had one theme in common. Meet and Network with many people while learning great things about SQL Server. This year I still intend to Meet and Network with others and learn about SQL Server but I’m also going to document and focus on the people at PASS. Everyone knows I’m a photo nut and tend to have my camera with me to much. Well this year it will always be on me. I’ve decided to forego my normal large laptop/camera bag for just a camera bag and net book. Most of the time my camera will be around me shoulder/neck on my R-Strap ready to take pictures whenever I can.
I’m a visual person and have a hard time remembering names and faces. Hopefully for me this will help me to recognize people for the next PASS Summit. All my pictures will end up on my Flickr Photostream and will be available to those that I have taken pictures of. If you would like a quick headshot or a picture with a friend at PASS feel free to seek me out and we’ll set something up.
If you would like to have fun and see Seattle and take pictures as well we have a Photowalk planned on Monday at 8:00 a.m. Feel free to come join us.
pat
That’s right this year at the PASS Summit you get to play Bingo! Not just any Bingo but Twtiter Bingo. Stuart A(@StuartA), Brent O(@brento) and Blythe M(@blytheMorrow) have put together rules and all the details of the contest. Stuart has blogged about it here. Basically you need to find people on the Bingo card on Tuesday you need to get a straight line. Monday two straight lines and then on Wednesday a blackout. Each day once you have gotten the specific pattern you need to turn it into the Quest booth at the expo hall. They will have a drawing for fabulous gifts and prizes. :)
Now I’m telling you all this because I’m a Bingo Square! My handle on twitter is @SqlAsylum. I will be one of the easiest squares to find because I'm typically wearing a red vest as a PASS Ambassador. 
So most of the time you can see me near the PASS Booth or in the halls helping to direct others to where they are trying to go. I’m also a PASS Board of director and would love to hear your thoughts on the PASS Elections, the conference or the Community in general. Hopefully you will all have a chance to find me. I’ll even tell you the story or my code word if you would like. It’s all about the PASS Conference and it’s history.
Pat
It’s that time of year again for the PASS Summit. Which means it’s time for a PASS Photowalk. Tim Ford(@sqlagentman) and myself wanted to get together last year and take some pictures around Seattle. Many friends joined us and the PASS Photowalk was born. We will be leading a Photowalk once again this year Here are all the details.
Where: Sheraton Lobby
When: Monday Nov 2nd 8:00 a.m.
Who: Anyone with a camera. The only requirement to Photowalking is a camera of some sort. If it's a camera on your phone that's fine. The goal is to socialize and meet other PASS/SQL folks and to take pictures while doing it.
Myself and Tim Ford will be leading the Photowalk. We will start off at the Sheraton and hopefully do a quick group shot and then work our way down to Pikes Place Market and then to Sculpture Park near Pikes place. From there will be anyone's guess. We will most likely stop at Pikes Place for some breakfast of some sort. Many of us will have things to attend later in the day on Monday so the walk most likely will not go past lunch time. Hopefully everyone is attending Don Gabor’s session later in the day as well.
We will use #sqlpassphotowalk as the hash tag for the event in case you want to follow where we are on twitter. I’m sure a few other people on the walk will be using twitter. If you know your going to be late email me at pat.wright@sqlpass.org and I’ll pass on my cell phone number so you can call me and find out where we are.
I've created a Flickr group for us to post photo's from the Photowalk. You can visit it here. http://www.flickr.com/groups/passphotowalk/ please Tag your photos with SQLPASS. For ease of searching. If you don’t have a flickr account it’s free to setup. You can see my pictures from last years Photowalk as well to get an idea of the walk.
Here are some suggestions to make this a good photowalk for you.
1. Be sociable. This is about learning and networking.
2. Be prepared. Last year we were lucky with excellent weather. We will see if we are that lucky again. Dress in layers and either carry an umbrella or be prepared to get wet. If your brining a Digital SLR like myself it’s best to have something to cover it up with such as a bag to keep the water out.
3. Walking. While we may stop at a location to take pictures there will be much walking. Wear shoes that are appropriate to do so.
4. Have fun. As with all things at PASS have a good time.
If there’s any questions comments feel free to add them here. I’ve also posted this in the Hotels.sqlpass.org forums .
Hope to see you all there!
Pat
Currently the PASS Board of Directors election is going on. You can vote for who you think should be on the Board for the next 2 years.
I really just want you to do 2 things.
1. VOTE!
2. Research the candidates and vote for you who you feel is the best candidates to be on the Board of Directors.
There was much lively debate over at Brent Ozar’s blog about Matt Morollo (@mattMorollo) one of the candidates running for the Board. There is information about the candidates as well on the PASS Election website. This information is being presented to you to help make a decision about who you want to vote for.
Having served my time on the Board I can tell you it’s not an easy position and these candidates will have many uphill battles in front of them. We belong to a wonderful community and it’s our responsibility to vote for who we feel are the best candidates. They will have a profound effect on the community as a Board of Director.
Good Luck to all the candidates and thank you for being willing to volunteer for the Board.
pat
Another Utah Code Camp has come and gone. I figured I would write up a quick review of the event both for all my readers benefit and for my own to keep a reminder of items I need to work on.
The morning started out rather hectic with the doors not getting open on time. Good idea to remember to always call your location and contacts the night before and make sure the times are right.
Thankfully STG brought in bagels and coffee/OJ so everyone had something to snack on while we were going through registration and getting the doors opened.
The sessions kicked off with a keynote from Dr Alistair Cockburn which I believe did an excellent job. Unfortunately I had many other minor details about the camp that needed my attention so I wasn’t able to make the session but so far from the surveys and others response he did a great job.
We made it through the sessions in the morning well without to many hiccups. Once again we fell a little short on pizza for the lunch hour. The lesson learned here is that for IT folk you have to triple your pizza order not double it.
We discussed Primary key topics, clustered indexes, Olap vs Oltp , and DB architecture in our database roundtable. I think most came out with some good questions answered and lots of good discussion was had by all. Next code camp we are going to plan for a full SQL track to get lots more information out to the people.
I was able to make it to Aaron Skonnard’s Session on Windows Azure and Cloud Computing. I had not seen Aaron speak before I’m happy to say I was not disappointed he did a wonderful job of speaking and confirmed many of my suspicions about the cloud and what we can expect from it(future blog post).
Of course my favorite part of the day is being able to give away stuff. :) We gave away a lot of software this time. Well over 10K in software.
All in all it was once again a great event and I’m already looking forward to the next one. Thank you to all my excellent sponsors that made the camp possible. A HUGE thank you to my presenters and to Craig, Nathan and Justin for helping me so much with organizing the event.
Hope to see everyone at the next Code Camp!
Peter Myers is in SLC this week to do some training. He was kind enough to approach the Local SQL PASS user group and offer to do a presentation. I helped out by organizing the location at New Horizons. This would be a good time to check for your Local SQL PASS Chapter if you don’t know where it is. Here’s a list!
Peter’s Presentation was “Developing a UDM with Analysis Services” UDM = Unified Dimension Model. This is a new name MS has given for Cubes in 2008. So don’t let the name fool you UDM =Cubes. Peter did a great overall presentation on Cubes showing us how to create them and enriching them with more features. Here’s some of the key points.
Reasons for Moving to OLAP Structures instead of OLTP
Performance,
Multiple Disparate Systems of data can be combined to one,
Interpretation /One Truth of the data can be controlled in one location.
DW is a continuing process never ending. Answering questions will always just yield more questions.
We all know that the more questions you answer the more questions the business has for you. So when someone says to you that the DW process will be done in 2-3 years it really won’t it will keep evolving. Much of the design and work to load the DW could be complete but more questions will keep coming.
Data Source Views
Allow for the abstraction of your data layer. It’s good to build the foundation properly and setup your DW database in the fact/dimension table schema that you have designed. When that’s not always possible or your given read only access to the data and you can’t change the underlying schema then you need to make those changes in Data source views. Here’s some key items you can do.
Create columns based on other columns.
Create tables based off queries and filter tables based off a query.
Create friendly names to make it easier to use in the cube.
Dimensions
Peter suggested creating your dimensions before allowing the cube wizard to create your dimensions for you. Typically I create my dimension tables in the underlying data structure and then allow the wizard to create the dimensions for me. I agree with Peter though that this will allow you to be more in control by creating the dimensions first and modifying them for your need and then just telling the wizard where to go to get the data. I like this approach much better and plan to move to it in the future.
It’s a good idea to change your Key columns and your Name columns in your dimensions to the data that you actually want. The wizard does not always get this right and should be something that you get the information you are looking for.
Limit your dimensions and don’t show the columns the end user doesn’t need.
Create hierarchies to help the end user navigate better.
SSAS 2008 incorporates best practices into it so if you see a blue squiggly line it’s making a suggestion that it wants' you to change something to meet best practices.
Cubes
Peter really showed us the building blocks to building the Cube so when it came to actually building the Cube it took very little time and worked very well. I’ve been a firm believer in building your foundation first for your cubes so huge props to Peter for doing an excellent job in explaining it this way for everyone.
Excel
I’ve used pivot tables in excel for many years so most of this was review for me but as always you should keep learning new things and I once again learned something new here. I learned that about the formula for =CubeMember() in excel. I was not aware of this before allowing you to place cube data just about anywhere in excel. This will be great for some specific reports that we have that are manually updated right now. I can place a sheet on the work book that has the cube data and just hide the sheet and reference it with this throughout the report that they want. Great added functionality.
Overall Peter not only knew his stuff but was an Excellent presenter. I really have a hard decision to make now on what pre-con I want to attend. :)
I’m planning some follow up blog posts on a few other key items he mentioned. Attribute hierarchies, properties of dimensions and more on using excel and CubeMember()
Thanks again Peter!
