NEW!!! Sydney SQL Server User Group !!!

My mate, Victor Isakov (MCT, MCITP, MCM, SQL Ranger) is starting a new SQL Server User Group Meeting during lunchtimes in the Sydney CBD. It will run on the 1st Wednesday of every month, from 12:30 to 14:30, at Westpac Place.

This new user group will focus more on best practices, optimization, design and implementation - areas specifically geared towards the corporate sector. The meetings will be of high quality that you would typically see at conferences such as Microsoft Tech Ed, SQL PASS or SQL Connections. A number of industry experts and Microsoft personnel have committed to presenting at this new user group in 2009.

The meetings of this new user group will rotate through 3 core themes:

• Database Administrator (DBA) Focuses on the responsibilities of the Database Administrator, covering areas such as disaster recovery, management, performance tuning, security and operational excellence.
• Database Developer (DBD) Focuses on the responsibilities of the Database Developer, covering areas such as query writing, query tuning, indexing strategies, locking architecture and database design.
• Database Architect (ARC) Focuses on the responsibilities of the Database Architect, covering areas such as high-availability, storage, consolidation / virtualization and scalability.

The details for the new SQL Server User Group are as follows:

It is important to pre-register for the SQL Server User Group Meetings to help facilitate entry into Westpac Place.

You can come on the day without pre-registering, and are encouraged to "bring a friend" but it will take longer to gain entry.

So please email victor@sqlserversolutions.com.au if you plan to attend.

Otherwise please pass on this information to your colleagues and / or managers so as to encourage attendance. We would like to see the corporate sector encourage attendance and participation in this new SQL Server User Group.

Just tell your manager these meetings represent "free quality training", something that they will surely love in the current economic climate. J

The first three meetings for 2009 are as follows:

Topic: DBA: Best Practices for All DBAs to Follow

Date: 4th February

Description: As the popularity of SQL Server continues to grow, so is the demand for new SQL Server DBAs. Unfortunately, you can't “go to school” to learn how to become a DBA. Most DBAs learn from books, seminars, short classes, and trial and error. This session is designed to encourage a cross-pollination of ideas and best practices between DBAs from different organizations. It includes best practices from the trenches which can only be obtained through experience.

Topic: DBD: A Comprehensive Guide to Indexing in SQL Server

Date: 4th March

Description: With the release of SQL Server 2008 the database developer has more choices in their arsenal for optimally indexing database solutions. In this session we will explore the different indexing technologies that are available in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008, such as included, composite and filtered indexes. We will discuss the primary design considerations and tradeoffs made when implementing an indexing strategy and present more "exotic" scenarios such as how to implement custom hash indexes, how to combine filtered indexes with sparse columns, partitioned indexes and how to implement partitioned views with different underlying table indexes.

Topic: ARCH: Reducing Your Storage Cost in SQL Server 2008

Date: 1st April

Description: Are increasing storage costs hurting your bottom line as data sizes keep growing throughout your organization? In this session, we explore how SQL Server can help you lower your storage costs. We start with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 partitioning to transparently migrate older data to lower-cost storage tiers over time. We then discuss new storage cost-saving functionality in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 such as data compression, backup compression, and sparse columns, filtered indexes, file stream which can get you to 50% or more reduction in storage requirements for typical applications. Throughout the session, we share experiences, insights, and best practices from SQL Server customers and Microsoft-internal deployments. Learn how to make good use of these technologies in combination.