Event link at our Meetup page.

SQL and Authentication and Permissions, Oh My!

The fundamentals of SQL security can be confusing even for people who have used them for years. There are many combinations, but they are built on simple building blocks that fit together in concrete ways. Like DNA the combinations are almost endless, but the rules are few and easy to remember.

Pat Phelan

Pat Phelan joined a user group (DECUS) in High School, and many more since then. Pat was paid for his first program before he got his driver’s license. After many jobs (with some great stories) in High School and College, Pat worked over twenty years for a major accounting firm. Pat started working for Involta in 2007 and is now the database mentor and a member of the Engineering team.  Involta builds, owns and operates world class colocation datacenters and provides managed services and support staff to clients.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

SQL Server on AWS RDS The Other Cloud Alternative

SQL Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Relational Database Services (RDS) is Amazon’s PaaS offering for SQL Server. In this session you will learn how to create an SQL Server Instance, know the difference between running SQL Server on RDS versus SQL Server on Premise.

H. Ross Reed

H. Ross Reed is a Lead Database Administrator for the Options Clearing Corp. He has been a database administrator for over 20 years. He’s Co-Organizer of the Chicago Data Professionals User Group, and a frequent presenter.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm Meeting

Secrets of the Plan Cache

You have heard of a query plan, right?  Perhaps even looked at one somewhere a long the way.  Have you ever wondered what information might be buried in the plan cache, the courses of action having that additional information might lead you to?  Perhaps you have wondered what plans in cache would benefit from those missing indexes or contemplated your cost threshold of parallelism, among other questions.  This session is designed to answer just that.  We will look at query plans without the pretty node icons and from there we will interrogate the plan cache thus putting its secrets to work for us.

Peter Shore

Peter is a seasoned IT professional with over 25 years of experience, a frequent speaker at SQL Saturday, User Groups, and other conferences.  He took the accidentally intentional DBA plunge in 2013 and has discovered that he loves to find the stories the data has to tell.  Peter is comfortable working with both physical and virtual servers where he tries to apply best practices to attain performance improvements.  He is also adept at bridging the gap between technical and business language in order to bring technology solutions to business needs.

Additionally, Peter is the president of CBusPASS in Columbus, Ohio and co-organizer of SQL Saturday Columbus.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm Meeting

Back to the Future with Temporal Tables

Back to the Future is the greatest time travel movie ever. I’ll show you how temporal tables work, in both SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, without needing a DeLorean. We cover point in time analysis, reconstructing state at any time in the past, recovering from accidental data loss, calculating trends, and my personal favorite: auditing. There’s even a bit of In-Memory OLTP. This is a demo-heavy session.

Randolph West

Randolph West (they/them) is an actor, author, and Microsoft Data Platform MVP, and has worked with SQL Server since the late 1990s. When not consulting, you can see them acting on the stage and screen, or doing voices for independent video games. Randolph is available for mentoring, and talks on SQL Server and technology in general. Do not trust Randolph around chocolate.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm Meeting

Intro to Azure Synapse Analytics

I will introduce briefly Azure Synapse architecture and features, demonstrate how to Create and setup a Synapse workspace, extract data from azure data lake or azure SQL Databases then analyze the data with dedicated SQL pools, and serverless moreover how to Integrate with pipelines, and monitor Azure Synapse Workspace.

Jean Joseph

Jean Joseph is a Data Engineer/DBA, highly experienced in Traditional Database, and Big Data technologies with a history of successes in designing, implementing complex technical projects for diverse businesses in various stages of their development. Acknowledged as a leader capable of mentoring teams of different backgrounds and talents moreover inspiring individual efforts to deliver.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm Meeting

SQL Server Configuration with dbatools and dbachecks

Automating the configuration of SQL Server instances and being able to check the configuration for standard configuration is an important role for any DBA when you have lots of instances. But how can we automate the configuration easily? How can we check to make sure the proper configuration is in place and hasn’t changed?

In this session, we will look at how to configure your SQL Server Instances using PowerShell and the dbatools module. Then we will look at how to use dbachecks to confirm the configuration of our instances and how to check for changes in the future of the configuration. Attendees will see how easy it is to use PowerShell via dbatools to configure their SQL Server instances.

Attendees will see how easy it is to use PowerShell via dbachecks and PowerBI to see if their servers are configured properly. Attendees will be given a set of scripts that take back to use to configure and test the configuration of their SQL Server instances.

Tracy Boggiano, Senior Database Administrator for DocuSign

Tracy Boggiano is currently a Data Platform MVP, PASSion 2020 Award winner, and works as a Senior Database Administrator for DocuSign. Tracy has worked on SQL Server since 6.5. She has spoken at numerous local user groups and SQLSaturdays, virtual groups, Data Relay, and Summit. She is currently a co-leader of the Triangle SQL Server User Group in Raleigh, NC. Tracy tinkered with databases in middle school to keep her sports card collection organized and got an early start on databases.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 PM Networking
6:00 PM Meeting

Ben Miller will present Advanced Powershell for the DBA February 8-10, 2021. One night for each of the three Iowa SQL User Groups!

Advanced PowerShell for the DBA (night 3 of three)

Night 3: All about DOING the work, not learning about HOW to do the work. Abstract: Learning is so fun, especially when it comes to PowerShell. But this session is ALL ABOUT DOING THE STUFF, not just learning about it. I will take you on a journey that will make you want to reach for the keyboard instead of the mouse. I will not be teaching you how to replace SSMS, but how to get more done with PowerShell and leave the visual stuff to SSMS. Join me in the final installment of PowerShell for the DBA that you won’t want to miss. Let’s use the TOOLS in your TOOLBOX and you won’t look at PowerShell in the same way again.All about DOING the work, not learning about HOW to do the work.

Abstract: Learning is so fun, especially when it comes to PowerShell. But this session is ALL ABOUT DOING THE STUFF, not just learning about it. I will take you on a journey that will make you want to reach for the keyboard instead of the mouse. I will not be teaching you how to replace SSMS, but how to get more done with PowerShell and leave the visual stuff to SSMS. Join me in the final installment of PowerShell for the DBA that you won’t want to miss. Let’s use the TOOLS in your TOOLBOX and you won’t look at PowerShell in the same way again.

Please join us for Night 1 and 2, as well!

Monday, Feb 8 – 5:30 PM Networking, 6:00 PM Presentation

Tuesday, Feb 9 – 5:30 PM Networking, 6:00 PM Presentation

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Event link at our Meetup page.

5:30 pm Networking
6:00 pm Meeting

Understanding Statistics in SQL Server

Are you new to performance tuning and confounded by statistics? Do you wonder where these statistics come from, and how the optimizer gets the estimates from statistics? Join me as we dive deep into cardinality estimation, how SQL Server uses statistics to build execution plans, where to find information about how statistics got used and why managing statistics is vital to performance. This session will have awesome demos showcasing practical examples of how the optimizer uses statistical information for all those crazy queries you write.

Deepthi Goguri, SQL Database Administrator Intone Networks Inc

I am a SQL Server Database Administrator with 7 years of experience in Administering SQL Servers. I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer and professional with an Associate and Expert level Certification in Data Management and Analytics. I did my Masters in Computer Technology at Eastern Illinois University. I blog for DBANuggets.com

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