For the second year in a row, Magenic sent multiple SQL Server
professionals to the PASS Summit. Seven consultants from Magenic regional offices around the country
were in attendance at the conference this year. Check out what we learned.
The Big Announcements
- Project Code Name Hekaton revealed which is the new in-memory OLTP engine
- Columnstore indexes will support updates and clustering
- New Parallel Data Warehouse appliance coming in 2013
- Polybase was introduced which allows you to query across multiple data sources including
relational and Hadoop within T-SQL
- Power View will be able to query a multidimensional cube
-
PASS Business Analytics coming to Chicago in April 2013
Networking
One of the highlights for the team was the ability to network with other data pros from Magenic that
were attending. Many of them had not met each other, so this conference was a great way to build
connections with coworkers from around the country.
Beyond that, some of the team had the chance to talk with the Microsoft product teams. This included
conversations with Mike Flasco, from the Big Data team, and Azure’s Umachandar Jayachandran.
Others on the team spent time with other SQL Server pros from around the world and had the
opportunity to hear and share about using SQL Server. A common theme was multiple discussions
about the role that Big Data has or will have in their environments.
Training
This is just one way that Magenic invests in the growth of its consultants. Many of those who attended
were able to learn about new methods or tools that they could put into place at our clients. The
sessions were timely and varied. Very few times would more than one team member attend the same
session. This speaks to the quality and breadth of the training at the conference.
Some of the sessions attended and enjoyed were:
- SQLCAT: BigData - All Abuzz about Hive
- Mobile Business Intelligence
- Querying and Optimizing DAX
- How Klout Changed the Landscape of Social Media with Hadoop and BI
- BI Power Hour
- T-SQL Tips and Tricks
- Harnessing Big Data with Hadoop (HDInsight)
- Query Optimizer Deep Dive
As you can see, a wide variety of topics were attended. Not only did the attendees learn new or
reinforce their knowledge, they will in turn present or blog on these topics to the benefit of Magenic
and the community.
Contributions
In addition to simply attending the conference, Magenic also made several contributions. Attending
this conference were a number of SQL User Group Chapter Leaders or volunteers and SQL Saturday
speakers and volunteers. Some were able to contribute to the knowledge sharing for those leaders
at the beginning of the conference. This included discussing strategy around upcoming SQL Saturday
events and Chapter Leadership round tables.
Magenic also provided a speaker to the conference. Steve Hughes (@DataOnWheels) contributed by
presenting two sessions – Building a Tabular Model and A Window into Your Data: Window Functions in
T-SQL.
A number of blog posts by our attendees have been posted in the past few days. These posts reflect
the unique perspective from the attendees. Here are a sample of the wrap up posts from a few of the
attendees.
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