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SQLSaturday is dead, long live DataSaturdays
This is a very brief post to inform you that PASS has died, killed by the for-profit company behind it.
That’s sad beyond words, but we, as a community, are not destined to the same fate. The community will rise again and build something new.
One of the things that we don’t want to lose is SQLSaturday. It’s been a substantial vehicle for involving community members locally and globally. It has been the launchpad for many community speakers. It has been the opportunity for many people to connect with other community members, share their knowledge and learn something new. Connect, share, learn… that sound familiar, right?
We don’t want to take the existing SQL Saturday and give it a new name, we want to start a new community initiative that enables us to continue delivering events. It needs to be a platform that allows us to continue doing what we were doing.
Do you want to be involved? Here’s what you can do:
- Head to datasaturdays.com and have a look. There’s not much content right now, but you have to start from something…
- Go to GitHub and join the discussion
There are many aspects that we need to cover and we know we’re not perfect right now. Please bear with us, we want to improve.
The main message here is that we need your help to continue running events for people to share, network and learn. A name a just a name and there’s more that identifies our community.
Come and help us, be a part of the solution
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
The next few months will be crazy for me. I will be travelling a lot around Europe, speaking about SQL Server topics.
Here is where you will find me in the upcoming weeks:
- May 4: SQLNexus
SQLNexus is a new conference in Copenhagen and will be the official launch event in Denmark for SQL Server 2016.
I will speak about “Responding to Extended Events in near Real-Time”.
- May 5: SQLBits
SQLBits doesn’t need to be introduced. It’s the biggest SQL Server event in Europe and it will also be the official SQL Server 2016 launch event in UK.
Again, I will speak about “Responding to Extended Events in near Real-Time”.
- May 16: NTK
NTK is a famous conference in Slovenia, which has been running for many years now. This year it will be held in Portorosz, near the Italian border.
It’s going to be fun: I will speak about “Benchmarking, Baselining and Workload Analysis”.
- June 14: INSIDE-SQL
INSIDE-SQL is also a new event, run this year for the first time. It’s an event focused on in-depth concepts, delivered in 75 minutes sessions, with long breaks between sessions, so that attendees can go to the next session without rushing and can hang out with the speakers and ask questions.
I will deliver two sessions:
“Responding to Extended Events in near Real-Time”
“Advanced T-SQL Techniques”
- June 24: SQL Saturday Paris
Free SQL Server training from the 40th floor of the Tour Montparnasse in Paris.What else can I say?
I will be speaking about “New Security Features in SQL Server 2016”
- September 10: SQL Saturday Cambridge
One of the coolest SQLSats around!
This time I’ll be speaking about “SQL Server Infernals”, AKA “how to torture your SQL Server instances to death with worst practices”. It’s going to be fun!
I hope to see you at these super cool events!
Speaking at SQLSaturday Pordenone
Next week, on Saturday 28, make sure you don’t miss SQLSaturday Pordenone!
Pordenone is the place where the Italian adventure with SQLSaturday started, more than two years ago. It was the beginning of a journey that brought many SQLSaturdays to Italy, with our most successful one in Parma last November.
Now we’re back in Pordenone to top that result!
We have a fantastic schedule for this event, with a great speaker lineup and great topics for the sessions. Everything is set in the right direction to be a great day of free learning and fun.
I will have two sessions this time:
SQL Server Security in an Insecure World
In this session I will talk about security, with a general introduction to the topic and then I’ll go straight to demonstrate some of the vulnerabilities that attackers could use to take over your server. Yes, I’ll be demonstrating SQL-Injection attacks: SQL-I is still a top security issue, even if we’re in 2015. Everyone must be aware of the risks and take action immediately.
I will also describe the security features available in SQL Server to lock down the server as much as possible, but the key concept I will try to drive is that security is a process, not a feature.
If you want to find out more, join me at 12:00 PM in room S7.
Extending the Data Collector to Monitor SQL Server effortlessly
In this session I will try to promote one of the least used features in SQL Server: the Data Collector. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the expensive monitoring suites, but it does the job pretty well. Things start to be painfully difficult when you try to extend it with additional collection sets, but the good news is that there’s an open-source project that provides a GUI to manage and customize the collection sets. The project is called ExtendedTSQLCollector and it does much more than just adding a GUI to the Data Collector: it also provides two additional collector types to collect data from LOB columns (in case you’re wondering, no – the vanilla Data Collector doesn’t support LOB columns) and Extended Events sessions.
I will also demonstrate a convenient way to centralize and extend the Data Collector reports to create a reporting and alerting solution for free.
Sounds interesting? Join me at 4:30 PM in room S7.
So, what are you waiting for? Register now and join us in Pordenone!
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