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SQL Server Geeks Annual Conference sessions – SSGAS 2015

September 4, 2015 Leave a comment

This year I got an opportunity to attend the SSGAS 2015 i.e. SQL Server Geeks – Annual Summit, the first time ever, large scale professional SQL Conference in India, Bangalore (KA), India, on Aug 27-29, 2015.

This was a 3 day conference organized by the SQLServerGeeks team, headed by Amit Bansal, covering sessions on Database Development, Administration, BI & Analytics, Big Data and Cloud & Azure Platform, delivered by expert speakers from Microsoft, MVP & MCM Community and Industry leaders.

I would like to share the sessions/topics I attended, their details and links to external references with my readers.

Following are the sessions I attended in the 3 day conference:

SSGAS 2015 | Day – 1

Topic	Speaker	Session Details & external links
SQL Server 2016, new innovations	Sanjay Mishra (MSFT)	Introduced various new features in SQL 2016, link.
Azure SQL Database, now & future	Lara Rubbelke (MSFT)	Detailed deep dive on Azure SQL database, link.
Tabular vs Multidimensional in SSAS	Alberto Ferrari	Details and differences between the two, link.
Business Prediction using Microsoft Azure ML	Deepthi Anantharam (MSFT)	Demoed a scenario on predicting income by reading different metrics, link.
Column Store Index: SQL Server 2014 & beyond	Sunil Agarwal (MSFT)	Detailed deep dive on ColumnStore tech, link.
Advanced SQL 2014 Reporting Tech	Dr Subramani Paramasivam	Detailed deep dive on Reporting Services (SSRS), and demoed how to configure Reports, connections and properties.

SSGAS 2015 | Day – 2

Topic	Speaker	Session Details & external links
In Memory OLTP: SQL Server 2014 and beyond	Sunil Agarwal (MSFT)	Detailed deep dive on In-Memory tech, link.
SQL Server Performance Tuning	Amit Bansal/ Manohar Punna (SSGAS)	Demoed performance tuning by using Query Store tool, a new feature of SQL 2016, link.
Analytics with Column Store Index	Praveen Srivastava	Discussed and demoed ColumnStore indexes, link.
Troubleshooting SQL Server Tips & Tech	Amit Khandelwal/ Sumit Sarabhai (MSFT)	Customer centric perf issues, creating dump by using SSDIAG & PSDIAG tools, and their dump analysis by SQL Nexus.
Query Processing in In-Memory OLTP	Benjamen Nevarez (MVP)	Discussed about In-Memory features in SQL 2014/2016, link.
Big Data for the SQL Ninja	Scott Klein (MSFT)	Demo on spinning up a new Hadoop cluster and Blob Storage on Azure.

SSGAS 2015 | Day – 3

Topic	Speaker	Session Details & external links
Dive into the Query Optimizer	Benjamen Nevarez (MVP)	Discussed QO internal and Trace flags, link.
SQL Server under attack via SQL injection	Anderas Wolter (MCM)	Preventing SQL Injection, link.
Operational Analytics in SQL Server	Sunil Agarwal (MSFT)	Real time analytics with ColumnStore, link.
Understanding Parameter Sniffing	Benjamen Nevarez (MVP)	Checking and resolving incorrect plans created by SQL DB engine, link.
SQL Server 2016 Stretch Database	Stuart Padley (MSFT)	Stretch Database demo to stretch on-prem SQL table to Azure DB, link.
Dealing with Bad Roommates – Resource Governor	Joey D’Antoni (MVP)	Discussed about how to manage SQL workload and system resource consumption, link.
Evangelizing SQL Server Dev paradise	Mahendraprasad Dubey/ Narendra Angane (MSFT)	Customer centric perf issues due to Blocks, Waits and Latches, resolving them by refactoring their SQL Code.
Social Media Sentiment Analysis using Hadoop on Windows	Debcharan Skarkar (MSFT)	Intro, demo.
Bursting Through the power of Datazen	Slevakumar Rajakumar (MSFT)	Datazen Intro, Server & Client details, vs Power BI & SSRS

Some social-networking, met with some tech-gurus:

With Scott Klien, [twitter], the Microsoft Channel9 host.

With Benjamin Nevarez, [twitter], [blog], the SQL Server Performance guru and author of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Query Tuning & Optimization book.

And Alberto Ferrari, [twitter], [blog], founder at SQLBI and author of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model book.

The wall!

at NIMHANS Convention Center, Bangalore (KA), India

Categories: SQL Server Conferences Tags: ‎SSGAS2015, SQL Azure, SQL Server, SSGAS

New Microsoft Azure Portal | Mind = Blown

August 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Microsoft recently announced a first-of-its-kind Cloud experience that brings together cross-platform technologies, services and tools, enabling developers and businesses to innovate at startup speed via a new Microsoft Azure Preview Portal.

“Developing for a mobile-first, cloud-first world is complicated, and Microsoft is working to simplify this world without sacrificing speed, choice, cost or quality,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president at Microsoft. “Imagine a world where infrastructure and platform services blend together in one seamless experience, so developers and IT professionals no longer have to work in disparate environments in the cloud. Microsoft has been rapidly innovating to solve this problem, and we have taken a big step toward that vision today.”

Windows AZURE is now Microsoft Azure!

New Portal: portal.azure.com

–> Check in this Video the new “AZURE Portal” & how DevOps just got a whole lot more awesome:

The new “Microsoft Azure” Portal provides a fully integrated experience that will enable customers to develop and manage an application in one place, using the platform and tools of their choice. The new portal combines all the components of a cloud application into a single development and management experience.

–> New components include the following:
1. Simplified Resource Management
2. Integrated billing
3. Gallery
4. Visual Studio Online
… for more info visit Microsoft Press, [link].

–> Easily Spin-Up a new “SharePoint Farm” in minutes:

You can see here on AZURE cloud how easily and in no time you can Spin-Up a new SharePoint Farm in minutes and few Clicks:

Azure also provides you various options to select SQL Server Plans based upon your preference and budget:

Otherwise in an on-Premise environment or with any other vendor solution this would take days to setup a new Server (Hardware) with Windows Server OS, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. installed and get things configured.

–> Spin-Up a new “SQL Database” in seconds:

Creating a new SQL Server instance is also very easy where you provide all necessary information in simple steps, like SQL Instance Name:

The new instance will be created in seconds and you can access the Instance Create Databases, Tables, Views, other DB Objects and easily Query them via SSMS.

–> Microsoft Azure Offerings:
Apart from these 2 offerings that we saw above, Microsoft Azure provides lot more that you can browse in Azure Gallery:

I’ll be exploring the new Portal as per my needs and post my experiences in coming posts, so stay tuned!

Categories: Microsoft Tags: Microsoft Azure, SQL Azure, SQL Database, Windows Azure

Microsoft AZURE | The Cloud for Modern Business

July 19, 2014 Leave a comment

Microsoft Azure is an Open and Flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly Build, Deploy and Manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed Data-Centers. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can Integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

–> Microsoft AZURE provides you:

1. Always up. Always on: Delivers a 99.95% monthly SLA and enables you to build and run highly available applications without focusing on the infrastructure.

2. Open: Enables you to use any language, framework, or tool to build applications. Features and services are exposed using open REST protocols.

3. Unlimited servers. Unlimited storage: Enables you to easily scale your applications to any size. It is a fully automated self-service platform that allows you to provision resources within minutes. Elastically grow or shrink your resource usage based on your needs.

4. Powerful Capabilities: Delivers a flexible cloud platform that can satisfy any application need. It enables you to reliably host and scale out your application code within compute roles.

–> Solutions Microsoft AZURE provides:

1. Virtual Machines: On-demand infrastructure that scales and adapts to your changing business needs.

2. Web: Secure and flexible development, deployment, and scaling options for any sized Web application.

3. Mobile: Fast and easy to build mobile apps that scale. Within minutes, you can store data in the cloud, authenticate users, and push notifications to millions of devices.

4. Dev & Test: Develop and test applications faster, at reduced cost, and with the flexibility to deploy in the cloud or on-premises.

5. Big Data: Reveal new insights and drive better decision making with Azure HDInsight, a Big Data solution powered by Apache Hadoop. Surface those insights from all types of data to business users through Microsoft Excel.

6. Media: Azure Media Services allows you to build scalable, cost effective, end-to-end media distribution solutions that can stream media to Adobe Flash, Android, iOS, Windows, and other devices and platforms.

7. Storage, Backup & Recovery: Scalable, durable cloud storage, backup, and recovery solutions for any data. It works with the infrastructure you already have to cost-effectively enhance your business continuity strategy and provide storage required by your cloud applications.

8. Identity & Access Management: Azure Active Directory delivers an enterprise ready cloud identity service enabling a single sign-on experience across cloud and on-premises applications. It allows multi-factor authentication for added security and compliance.

–> Current AZURE footprint: