Our Past Meetings


 

Meeting Date

Monday, December 01 2008

Session Title

T-SQL for .NET Developers (Joint Meeting with Vermont.Net user group)

Description


Presentor


Klaus Aschenbrenner

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, October 08 2008

Session Title

Upgrading to SQL 2008: Notes from Early Adopters and Best Practices

Description

Upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Notes from Early Adopters and Best PracticesPerforming a major version upgrade can be a daunting task considering how many moving parts today's applications typically have. Verifying that your application will work without problems is no small feat. Issues such as TSQL compatibility, system and user function, deprecated features, security models, etc... all contribute to making your testing efforts harder. This session covers both tools and application compatibility testing methodology developed joint by Microsoft and Scalability Experts. Beyond just static analysis of your database, this session also provides detailed guidance on how to test actual code execution against SQL Server 2008 including dynamic SQL for both in-place upgrade and side-by-side (migrate) methods.

Presentor


Rob Walters

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Tuesday, September 02 2008

Session Title

SQL Server development with Ajax

Description

With the “coming of age” of AJAX within the ASP .NET world, developers have more tools within their arsenal to produce better looking websites and to take advantage of the opportunities presented with asynchronous processing.

More often than not, web applications have inherently employed large request/response cycles to build pages which in turn creates less natural and not very dynamic/responsive pages.

This hands-on presentation draws its data from SQL Server database tables and will show the attendee (through a series of small examples) the benefits that one can obtain by incorporating AJAX based technology into a website.

Additionally the attendee will be shown the benefit that can be obtained, by incorporating web services into the blend.

Presentor


Stephen Simon

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Thursday, July 31 2008

Session Title

What’s new in SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence

Description

SQL Server 2008 is a very exciting release, both for the relational database engine as well as for the BI technologies. This session will provide a high level overview of the various changes in SQL Server 2008 BI technologies including SQL Server Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services. We will also spend some time addressing upgrade scenarios and show a number of demos.

Presentor


Rushabh Mehta

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Thursday, June 26 2008

Session Title

SQL Server 2008 Launch Event

Description

** Date Change**. Due to a delay in launch kits arriving, we have decide to push the Launch event out to June. More details to follow. This is the big SQL Server 2008 Launch event. We'll be discussing what's new with SQL 2008 and handing out tons of swag. More details to come as the date gets nearer.

Presentor


Laura Blood and Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, January 09 2008

Session Title

SQL Server 2005 Worst Practices

Description

Time and again, you will hear people speak about "best practices" and "preferred practices" in SQL Server 2005 and 2008, but nobody ever warns you about the things you shouldn't be doing. Learn how to make your SQL server prone to SQL Injection, how to use the CLR for all data access, how to use cursors instead of DML, and so on. Come and learn from the masters of worst practices!

Presentor


Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Tuesday, October 02 2007

Session Title

What's new with SQL Server 2008

Description

SQL Server 2008 is the next release within the third generation of SQL Server products from Microsoft. Grab on to your seat as this presentation will be a fly through of new features and capabiities of SQL Server 2008 (Demos included!). Topics to be discussed include the new Declarative Management Framework, Resource Governor, new Date and Time data types and spatial support within the SQL engine. Come to just listen or bring your list of questions, issues or concerns about SQL Server. It will be a very productive and enjoyable evening!

Presentor


Rob Walters

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, June 20 2007

Session Title

What is SQL Server Service Broker (SSB)?

Description

Jean-René Roy will try to answer the following questions. What does it do? Which versions of SQL Server can use SSB? What kind of application can use this? Does it scale between servers? Why use SSB over MSMQ? What are the advantages and disadvantages of SSB over MSMQ, BizTalk and WSE and WCF? Is it complicated to use SSB?

Presentor


Jean-René Roy

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, April 18 2007

Session Title

Roman's Favorite new SQL 2005 Features

Description

In this "hands-on" session I will show you a mix (and I mean mix) of useful and practical features in SQL Server 2005 that I have been able to use in applications or for my SQL Server development in the last year. I will be demonstrating database snapshots, synonyms, handy enhancements in T-SQL as well as a few useful tips for the new SQL Server tools. Feel free to jump in and share you favorite features as well, just bring a laptop.

Presentor


Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, February 21 2007

Session Title

Data Warehousing - Beyond the Cube

Description

Note - Different Date than Normal!
For most of us, when the term data warehouse is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is SQL Server Analysis Servers. The Microsoft Marketing Engine (MSME) has done a pretty effective job at demonstrating how to point an OLAP wizard at a traditional OLTP database and turn it into a cube suitable for business intelligence tasks such as data mining. But as is typically the case, these point and click, wizard-based solutions will only get you so far. For a truly robust data warehouse, be prepared for a pretty significant effort. In this session, we'll review how to build a dimensional model within the relational database engine and discuss some best practices and design choices. We'll also discuss the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) processes which entail the largest work effort in developing a data warehouse. Finally, we'll walk through the process of creating a cube from the dimensional model. We'll use the AdventureWorks OLTP and data warehouse sample databases as examples.

Presentor


Tom Cooley

Location

My Web Grocer

Meeting Date

Monday, December 11 2006

Session Title

Annual Holiday Party

Description

Potluck food and geek fest. Exact location still TBA. This is a joint celebration with the Vermont .Net usergroup. Hope to see you there.

Presentor


NA

Location

To Be Determined

Meeting Date

Thursday, December 07 2006

Session Title

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals

Description

Take Control of the Database Development Lifecycle with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals

Have you ever had to test code under development against the ""production"" version of your database, simply because it was the only copy that was the ""truth?"" If so, you know first-hand the challenges of managing a database as it moves throughout the software development life cycle. Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (VSTE-DBPro) extends the Visual Studio Team System with progressive tools that make it easier to create and test applications that work with databases.

In this session, you'll learn best practices for keeping your development, test and production databases in sync from a schema and data perspective. We'll explore how to create and version database schemas, and how to utilize schemas for 'off-line' development against a database schema. You'll see how to create test data that truly mimics real data, and how to use Unit Tests to validate your application against a database. Finally, we'll explore how to manage database schema changes using Team Foundation Server - making database development a true participant in the software development life cycle."

Presentor


Susan Wisowaty

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Wednesday, September 27 2006

Session Title

Introduction to Analysis Services 2005

Description

Analyzing data requires different techniques to fit different scenarios. OLAP cubes provide structured hierarchical views of data to aid drill-down analysis, while Data Mining attempts to predict structural relationships within the data. This session will provide an overview of these modern analysis methods, with examples of the applications of both techniques. Highlights of the programmability interface such, as MDX will also be covered.

Presentor


Tamer Farag

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Monday, August 21 2006

Session Title

Summer Hiatus

Description

We'll be doing our usual summer hiatus, taking the next two months off from meetings. We're in the process of scheduling our September meeting and will update the site with details.

Presentor


NA

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Monday, June 19 2006

Session Title

What's new in SQL Reporting Services 2005

Description

We'll be looking at what new features have been built into SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. More details to come...

Presentor


Susan Wisowaty

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Thursday, May 04 2006

Session Title

Native XML Web Services in SQL Server 2005

Description

Note - Different Date than Normal due to DevTeach coordination. SQL Server 2005 allows you to provide Web Services directly from the database engine using the HTTP and SOAP protocols. You can now create one or more endpoints in the database and expose your stored procedures and user defined functions as Web Services methods, or execute T-SQL batches as a Web Service call. This session will show you how this feature works, what the limitations are as well as the best practices and security considerations.

Presentor


Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Monday, March 13 2006

Session Title

XML Data in SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005

Description

Exploring the new XML Data Type

Presentor


Stephen Forte

Location

VTC Williston Campus

Meeting Date

Monday, February 13 2006

Session Title

SQL Server 2005 Launch

Description

This will be a fun event, with a lot of swag to raffle off: Full VS Studio 2005 Professional and SQL Server 2005 Standard DVDs, exam vouchers for VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005 exams, and Books. We will give an overview of what's new in SQL Server 2005. The presentation will cover such items as: The new Data Types, What's new in TSql, Service Broker, and SQL Server Integration Services. We hope to see you there!

Presentor


Laura Blood and Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing
Downloads
Slides

Meeting Date

Monday, December 19 2005

Session Title

Annual Holiday Party

Description

Lot's of appetizers, desserts, jazz music and good conversation!

Presentor



Location

Parima Thai Restaurant

Meeting Date

Monday, November 28 2005

Session Title

SQL Server Database Maintenance Plans

Description

SQL Server Database Maintenance Plans provide an easy and convenient mechanism for automating database maintenance tasks such as full backups, log backups, consistency checks and reindexing. While they are not really suitable for very large databases, they work really well for small to mid-size databases provided they are properly set up and configured. This presentation will cover the architecture of SQL Server 2000 DB maintenance plans, the pros and cons of using them, suggested configuration options and best practices, and a few workarounds around the limitations in the UI and some existing maintenance plans bugs. We will also look at what's new and improved (and missing believe it or not) in DB Maintenance plans in SQL Server 2005.

Presentor


Roman Rehak

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Tuesday, September 13 2005

Session Title

Highlighting the SQL Server 2005 Relational Engine

Description

SQL Server 2005 provides developers and DBAs with many new enhancements for indexing and performance. Discussion of the more important relational storage engine highlights: -Table and index partitioning -Indexes with additional columns included -Correlated datetime statistics -Snapshot Isolation Level -Indexed view enhancements -Persisted computed columns -Disabling indexes. How and when to use these new features to drive development of more highly performant, scalable SQL Server-based applications.

Presentor


Rushabh Mehta

Location

Competitive Computing

Meeting Date

Monday, May 16 2005

Session Title

SQL Server 2000 Security in a Web scenario

Description

Eric covered many topics including Ticket vs. Token, Delegation vs. Impersonation, and many tips for tightening security. Great overview of the anatomy of authentication, authorization and the network communication. "Reduce the Surface of Attack." Remove everything that's not needed, tighten things down even if you don't see how a hacker could take advantage.

Presentor


Éric Côté

Location

Competitive Computing