SQL Server 2005/2008 Conference – November 2007, Las Vegas
By Kalman Toth, M.Phil., M.Phil., MCDBA, MCITP
December 1, 2007

It was two years after I went to the introduction of SQL Server 2005 in Mandalay Bay Hotel/Casino Conference Center; I attended the Microsoft/SQL Magazine conference again for DBA-s, sql/.net developers and business intelligence professionals. There were great presentations about the coming SQL Server 2008 – ETA 2008 Q2 – and the sophisticated applications of the current Microsoft database powerhouse: SQL Server 2005. Surprisingly, a whopping attendance by 5,000 software engineers.

SQL Server 2008 boasts new automation control features which among others can prevent a “hog” process monopolizing the server like frequently happens with large batch jobs or reports.  DATE data type is introduced as well, quite a nice feature since most of the time the “time” of DATETIME is only pollution in the database. Geography data type with support for map based application and other spatial-based software. The row constructor feature allows to populate a table with several rows instead of only one by using INSERT TableX ( column list) VALUES ( row 1), (row 2)…. Table-valued parameters are allowed. Local variables in stored procedure can be declared table type. “UPSERT” (MERGE…USING….) feature inserts or updates automatically.

The darlings of SQL Server 2005 presenters were: CTE-s, SSIS, database mirroring, data mining, SSRS, data warehouse management, OLAP architecture and performance tuning.

Among the numerous excellent presentations a few outstanding:

• Be More Productive with SQL Server 2005 Tools by Michael Raheem; Tips and techniques for effectively using SQL Server and find out how these revolutionary tools can increase your productivity. Demos of SQLCMD, Management Studio, SQL Agent, Profiler/Replay, and Database Engine Tuning Advisor.
• Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2005 by Eric Hanson; How you can use the SQL Server 2005 engine as a data warehouse, in coordination with transactional data sources, SQL Server Integration Services for ETL, SQL Server Reporting Services for reporting, and SQL Server Analysis Services for OLAP. Learn use of partitioning to manage the sliding window scenario for large fact tables, bulk loading and removal, management of statistics, index and indexed view design, writing queries to get good query plans, creating conditions to support star join optimization, and recognizing star join plans. Best practices with respect to managing a multi-user workload, hardware sizing and selection, and use of the scalable shared database technology for scale-out of a read-only database.
• Management and Deployment of SSIS by Rushabh Mehta; The key to long term success of SSIS-based systems is a planned approach to configuration management and deployment. A carefully architected approach can simplify the management of the many variables within an organization that affect the functioning of these packages. These variables include server name, database names, and file system, among others. Check out functionality that is available within SSIS to implement these configuration management options and discuss best practices on how to use this functionality. Look at the different deployment