All of the keynotes from this years conference not only are the keynotes being streamed live, but many of the sessions are also being streamed live via the SQL PASS website on PASS TV.  The full schedule can found on the PASS TV page.

Bill Grazino told us turning his keynote that pass has sponsored 9 non-PASS events around the world.  Including these 9 events, pass has provided well over 500,000 hours of training to members of the community, much of it like SQL Saturday’s, User Groups, etc. being available to the attendees free of charge.  PASS has created a business analytics specific conference which will be held April 10-12 2013 in Chicago, IL.  More information will be available on the SQL PASS website shortly.

When Ted Kummert took the stage he talked about some of the great products that Microsoft has released this year including SQL Server 2012, the Surface, Windows Server 2012, Office 2013 as well as many others. 

Ted announced that SQL Server 2012 has been released as of today.  This release aligns with Office 2013 and the new SharePoint 2012.  Ted also announced project Hekaton which is a new in memory database engine which will be introduced within the next major release of SQL Server.  Project Hekaton is a fully in-memory database engine which will greatly improve OLTP performance.  While this new engine is a part of the SQL Server database engine, this portion has been totally rewritten to really maximize the hardware under the SQL Server database engine.

Including Product Hekaton is the Hekaton AMR Tool which (when renamed) will help identify bottlenecks which can be resolved by converting the database to a Hekaton database engine.  Because the Hekaton engine is running with the entire database being in memory latching has effectively been removed.  Hekaton also supports recompiling stored procedures from running T-SQL to running as native machine code.  This allows the stored procedures to run much, much faster without any actual code change.  While not all workloads are going to be right for the Hekaton database engine, but those that are should see a massive performance improvement.  Because project Hekaton runs within the same database engine that we have today if you know SQL Server you will already know how to work with a project Hekaton database.

Another great announcement is the clustered column store which will be introduced in the next major release of SQL Server.  Along with the clustered column store index we will also be able to update tables which have column store indexes created on them, no matter if the column store index is a clustered column store index or a non-clustered column store index.  This will introduce massive performance improvements to real time data warehouses and make data warehouses much easier to setup and performance tune; even with the largest workload.

For the non-relational side of things you can today download the Microsoft HDInsight Server CTP which is Microsoft’s Hadoop offering.

Ted also announced a new update to the Microsoft PDW which will be available in the 1st half of 2013 and will be called the SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse.  This update will include some of the features which will be included in the next major release of SQL Server such as the updatable column store index.  Another big enhancement of the new SQL Server 2012 PDW is that SQL Server Management Studio will now be the query tool which is used to run the queries against the PDW system.  During the demo against the PDW doing a simple count against a 1PB table the query ran in just a few seconds.  Doing data aggregations against the same table for a real world style reporting query the query again ran in just a few seconds.

The next announcement was Polybase.  Polybase allows you to query data from an external source from within the SQL Server 2012 PDW.  This will allow you to create an external table which simply links to a Hadoop cluster.  This will be done with the CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE  statement which accepts the schema that you want and a hdfs URL to Hadoop without needing to create a linked server to the Hadoop cluster.

The next step of BI is here in SQL Server 2012 SP1 and Office 2013.  Office 2013 includes PowerView natively within the product.  It also supports some new mapping features natively within Office 2013 without any additional downloads or plugins.  This support includes term extraction which is done through HDInsight.  This allows us to view text data and extract names, sentiment, locations, etc. from simple text data and use those extracted strings in order to build PowerView reports.  PowerView also now supports DAX queries to a MOLAP cube straight out of the box.

Stay tuned for more updates from the PASS Summit through out the week.

Denny

What this sponsorship means is that the drinks are paid for, provided that you have a wristband which you have picked up from the Idera booth in the Exhibit hall Wednesday during the day.  If you don’t get a wristband, don’t worry you can still come and have a great time, the event isn’t limited to those with a wristband.  The only catch if you don’t have a wristband is that you’ll have to buy your own drinks.  Now don’t worry about singing, singing isn’t a requirement of attending SQL Karaoke.  Trust me. I can’t sing at all (see the videos below if you don’t believe me).

If you sing or don’t, if you have a wristband or not, the night is a great night, with some great singing, and some truly awful singing (this one probably isn’t safe for work) (yes I’m in all awful videos, this should give you an idea of my singing ability), it’s some awesome singing and an awesome night, and isn’t to be missed.

Now to be fair Bush Garden is small, cramped, hot, and the service can be a tad on the slow side (ok, that’s being pretty generous), but the vibe in the place is just right and SQL Karaoke just isn’t the same anywhere but Bush Garden (though we will try really hard next year in Charlotte) and pretty much everyone who attends has a great time.  If you don’t believe me, watch the videos above to get some idea of the insanity.

Spread the word, SQL Karaoke is just 6 days away.  Be there!

Denny

P.S. Don’t forget to head over to the Idera booth Wednesday during the exhibit hall hours to get a wristband for the drinks.

Do note that you’ll want to use the low-res version.  The high-res version doesn’t work.

The recording will be available there until October 2013, but you’ll probably want to watch the video before the summit.

See you at the summit,

Denny

However in order to get the free drinks you’ll need to go and see the fine folks at the Idera booth during the day while the exhibit hall is open.  At the Idera booth you’ll be able to pick up a wristband which is good for one night, and one night only.  After that the only thing you need to do is have some dinner and at about 9:30pm Wednesday night head over to Bush Garden.  Wristbands are given out first come, first served using what ever criteria the fine folks at the Idera booth come up with.

Bush Garden is about a 30 minute walk (I’d recommend walking in a group if you want to walk) from the convention center.  From the convention center walk down Pike (towards the water) and turn right on 6th.  Walk for about a mile then turn right on Jackson, then left on Maynard.  It’s about 2 1/2 blocks down on the left.

Unfortunately Bush Garden isn’t in the best of neighborhoods so do use caution.

Personally I recommend a taxi as I’m lazy and it’s a long walk.  A cab should cost you about $5 or so to get there from the convention center and/or hotel.

If you are looking for a great way to unwind and watch some people do some great singing (and some others make total fools of themselves) this is THE party to go to.  It’s also a great place to meet some of the MVPs as well as some of the folks from the product group.  If you aren’t sure what you are getting in for by attending, don’t forget to check out the website.

The wristbands to come with a budget attached, so drinks will be first come first served.  As always please don’t go overboard with drinking.

See you at Bush Garden,

Denny

During this webcast I’ll be telling you a lot of what you’ll need to know about the Seattle Convention Center, how to get around town, how to get to the hotels from the airport, where to find places for dinner, how to find your way around the convention center, and much more.

If you’ve been to the PASS Summit in Seattle before I’d recommend watching anyway as there will be some new information for you.  Most importantly where breakfast and lunch will be served as the lunch hall is moving.

You do need to fill out my annoying registration form to get the meeting info.  The form is painless I promise.

I’ll see you this afternoon.

Denny

These sessions are a fantastic deal as you get a full day session, hand out, lunch plus lots of time to chat with the presenter and attendees before the sessions, during the breaks as well as after the session.

Can’t decide which session you want to attend?  No problem there are two days of PreCons so you’ll be able to turn the 3 day PASS Summit into a 5 day conference for just a few hundred dollars more.  If you are heading out to the PASS Summit I’d really encourage you to sign up for one of the pre-cons.  I’d love to have you in my pre-con called “SQL Server 2012 in a Highly Available World” where we are going to walk through all of the high availability options which are available in SQL Server 2012 (as well as in the older versions as well), learn how to get them setup and most importantly figure out when we should be using each one.

If you are already signed up you can modify your registration or contact the registration contact listed on the registration page and she’ll be happy to add a pre-con onto your registration.

I look forward to seeing you at the summit, and at my precon,

Denny

During this webcast I’ll be telling you a lot of what you’ll need to know about the Seattle Convention Center, how to get around town, how to get to the hotels from the airport, where to find places for dinner, how to find your way around the convention center, and much more.

If you’ve been to the PASS Summit in Seattle before I’d recommend watching anyway as there will be some new information for you.  Most importantly where breakfast and lunch will be served as the lunch hall is moving.

You do need to fill out my annoying registration form to get the meeting info.  The form is painless I promise.

Denny

Where Should I Be Encrypting My Data being presented by me

SQL Server 2012 Security for Developers being presented by Andreas Wolter

The Evolution of Security in SQL Server 2012 being presented by Don Kiely

SQL Injection: From Website to SQL Server being presented by Mladen Prajdić

There are a couple of other sessions that mention security in the abstract, but based on these abstracts I’m guessing that security won’t be mentioned very much during the actual sessions.

Denny

P.S. Don’t forget about my free SQL PASS 2012 First Timer’s webcast coming up on October 17th, 2012 at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern.  You do need to sign up for the session, which is FREE so get signed up.  Even if you have attended the SQL PASS summit before, this is worth it as there are some big changes in how PASS will be laid out at the convention center this year.

The cost for this pre-con is $95 (US) plus an additional $6.22 (US) in fees to Event Bright for a total of $101.22.

I urge you to sign up for this great all day pre-con session today as seating for this session is limited.

Denny

P.S. Don’t forget this session will be held in English.

The second session that I’ll be presenting will be an all day pre-con on high availability called “SQL Server 2012 in a Highly Available World“.  During this will day session we will be looking at the legacy high availability solutions such as Database Mirroring, Log Shipping and SQL Server Clustering, but we will also be looking at the new AlwaysOn Availability Groups to see really when you should be looking at each one of these solutions, and when you should be combining some of these solutions to get even higher (and more complex) availability options.  While this high availability session does come with an extra cost, it’ll be worth every penny.

I hope to see you at the SQL PASS summit.

Denny

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my SQL PASS First Timers webcast on October 17th, 2012.