04Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit Wednesday Key Note 3

PASS
More demos using Analysis Services from R2. They're showing how you can refresh data & reports without having to write a bunch of SSIS packages. That's pretty cool too. You can actually connect to Excel now and pull data into SSAS to manage the data like it was a database. You're going to have to spend time managing these files like they were servers. Analysis services is starting to manage itself? I hate to say this, but I've heard that kind of statement before from MS. It wasn't true then. Is it true now? No idea yet, but the small part of me that doubts these things just fired up. The reports can be animated. Data in motion is pretty darn slick to watch. Powerpivot is a freebie that runs…
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04Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit Wednesday Key Note 2

PASS
Tom Casey of Microsoft on BI. 20% of people that are decision makers within organizations have the tools and information they need. That means that 80% don't have it. I believe those numbers. Microsoft is very focused on getting BI built into the information platform. You can tell from the stuff released in SQL Server 2008. Part of the proof he's putting out is the PASS Summit itself. There's 2 dedicated BI trackes, 50+ sessions, and 30% of attendees said they were interested in that track. For some information Ron Vanzanten. He's sporting identical clothing to Tom Casey. 4 million card holders and 3200 employees. They'll be working through 600,000 credit card applications in a month. Woof. 24tb of customer data in a SQL Server BI environment. Woof X2. Unfortunately,…
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04Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit Wednesday Key Note 1

PASS
Nice phot montage, included so many friends. I love PASS. Rushab Mehta launching the Wednesday key note. Unfortunately, this is the DULL, but important, stuff about finances. PASS is a non-profit, volunteer run organization. I'm not going to track this stuff. You can find the full financials on the PASS web site. Celebrating volunteers. You do need to thank the people that make this thing run. I'm especially amazed by the work done by the Program Committee. The outstanding volunteers for the year are: Tim Ford - Program Committe, Quizbowl Me - SQL Server Standard, Editorial Committee Amy Lewis - Co-leader & Volunteer Coordinator for BI Virtual Jacob Sebastian - Chapter Regional Mentor The PASSion Award is going to two people this year: Charley Hanania - International Recipient Allen Kinsel…
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04Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PASS Summit 2009 – Day 1

PASS
YAAAAAH! The PASS Summit is pretty amazing. Yesterday I sat through the key notes from Microsoft. I was at the bloggers table where I could hear the speaker and lots of typing. I used to consider myself a blogger, but then I watched Brent Ozar doing and learned that I was doing it all wrong. Anyway, the key note was pretty interesting. They talked about future plans and directions of the information platform (note, not data). Right after I presented my first session, Execution Plan Best Practices.  The room was darned full and I only had one, very minor, glitch. After that I RAN to the Birds of a Feather lunch to host a table discussing developing databases on a team. It went all right. I don't think my table…
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