24 Hours of PASS: Preview to 2010 PASS Summit

PASS is having another 24 Hours of PASS (24 HOP) event to give a preview of what can be expected at the 2010 PASS Summit. In case you didn't know the 24 HOP event features 24 live webcasts which provides free SQL Server education from some of the top SQL Server and BI experts from around the world. This is the third time that the event is taking place and it will be held on the 15th and 16th of September. Unlike the previous 24 HOP events which were 24 consecutive one hour presentations, this event will be presented 12 hours a day for two consecutive days. If you are interested in gaining SQL Server knowledge then check out the 24 Hours of PASS website for more information about registration for the event. On the site you will also find out about some BONUS Session from Microsoft. Separate registration is required for these sessions.


The last event was special because I achieved my goal of attending all 24 sessions. This time I plan to attend all 24 sessions and the four bonus sessions. I will also be the moderator for session 20 - “Automate Your Database Maintenance Using Ola Hallengren’s Free Script” which is being presented by Brad M. McGehee. Brad is the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software and is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 15 years SQL Server experience. He is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, devLINK, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars.

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PASS SQL Azure VC Event: SQL Azure 101 - RESCHEDULED‏

Due to some issues that occurred, our first event had to be rescheduled to September 7th 2010(today) at 12:00 PDT. I apologize for the late update but we wanted to ensure that everything was properly arranged before sending the new date; unfortunately some confirmations took longer than we expected.

For more information about the event see my previous blog post.
For the Live Meeting link please visit the PASS SQL Azure Site.

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TTSSUG Event Review: Lifecycle of an SSIS package

The Trinidad and Tobago SQL Server User Group (TTSSUG) held its second meeting at the Leon Agostini Conference Room, in the Chamber of Commerce Building on August 25th. The meeting had a total of 41 attendees which included members and a few newcomers from various organisations.

We began with a small presentation to explain the mission and goals of TTSSUG and also to introduce the steering committee to the attendees. The presentation ended with an introduction of the main presenter, Gregory Chee. Gregory is an Application Consultant in Microsoft Business solutions department with Esprit Consultants Limited and has over 7 years of IT experience. His presentation, Lifecycle of an SSIS package: From development to production, gave a brief introduction to SSIS and helped people to understand the basic concepts of SSIS. Most of his session was focused on demonstrating how to create and deploy two SSIS packages. The first package was a basic ETL package which introduced Control Flow items such as Data Flow Task and Execute SQL Task. The package also showed the use of Data Flow sources, destinations and some basic transformations. The second package was create to combine data from multiple excel files and compare them to a database in order to produce a report. This package highlighted variables, looping, table lookup, output redirection and package logging. The presentation and the packages can be downloaded here.

I would like to thank Microsoft Trinidad and Tobago team for sponsoring this event and for assisting us with everything that contributed to the event. Also special thanks to Gregory Chee for coming to share his knowledge with the group during his vacation time. Last but most importantly, I would like to thank the people who attended the event and who were interested in attending the event. For more information about SSIS please visit SSIS homepage on MSDN.

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