Free January Training Webinar Series

Pragmatic Works, SQL Server Central and Microsoft would like to invite you to a another month of Free SQL Server Training delivered by the people that write the books! January Speakers and Topics Register Here!

Speaker: Brian Knight Topic: Introduction to PowerPivot Date: January 3, 2012, 11:00AM EDT In this session, you’ll learn how to use PowerPivot to create self-service analytics in your organization. You’ll see how Office 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 will help your users answer their own questions and bring together datasets that may be heterogeneous like a SQL Server table and data feed from a website. Then, you’ll see how to take that data and create a striking report for your end users and collaborate with the data in SharePoint.

Speaker: Mark Stacey Topic: Analysis Services for the DBA Date: January 5, 2012, 11:00AM EDT Many DBAs have heard the term Analysis Services, but don't really know what it's for or who would use it. In this session, Mark will explain the use cases for Analysis Services, illustrate how it improves performance for large data sets and eases report writing, and will go through a practical example of building a first Analysis Services solution, and managing Analysis Services in a production environment.

Speaker: Arie Jones Topic: Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012 Date: January 10, 2012, 11:00AM EDT Most DBAs at one time or another have been taught the importance of master data management(MDM), which is comprised of a set of processes and tools in order to keep your non-transactional data in a consistent state. However, with today’s fast paced environment and tightening budgets most DBAs lack the resources to properly implement it. With the upcoming release of SQL Server 2012, Microsoft has taken their second swipe at providing a tool known as Master Data Services(MDS) to aid the DBA in this endeavor. In this session, you will learn the how Master Data Services is implemented in SQL Server 2012, setting up models, working through the Excel plug-in, and utilizing DQS and business rules to help with that dirty data. This session will definitely be an eye opener for some that were on the fence with the first release and those that are coming into the platform with a fresh set of eyes!

Speaker: K. Brian Kelley Topic: Using Powershell to Check Your SQL Server Security Date: January 12, 2012, 11:00AM EDT Monitoring the security on your SQL Servers can be a tedious chore. Tune in to learn how to use Powershell to help automate this work. We'll look at how to use scripts to capture basic details, to do comparisons from scan to scan, as well as how to automate remediation of issues discovered.

Speaker: Hope Foley Topic: Super-size Your SSIS Breakfast Sandwich: Performance Tuning 2012 SSIS Data Loads Date: January 17, 2012, 11:00AM EDT Importing data is as common to SQL Server as bacon is to a savory breakfast sandwich. As most of us love to eat those breakfast sandwiches, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) loves to eat data in an Import/Export kind of way. Although a green chain of boxes in SSIS can be the ruling “Happy Dance” of any DBA or SQL Developer, we must all still consider the performance of those tasks. In this session, we will go through performance tuning in SSIS 2012 after a successful SSIS package has been developed. When we are finished with this session, not only will you still have the mystic of green colors of successful execution of your SSIS import and export tasks, but the turbo boosters will be turned on as well.

Speaker: Mark Brown Topic: Beginning Development for Business – Part 4: Running in the Halls Date: January 24, 2012, 11:00AM EDT In this session we look closer at what a databases are and what roles they play in business. We will talk about database design and how it can differ depending on its primary use. We will look at how to create a database by creating the database for our application. We will look at the tools used to create and manage databases. We will go over multiple methods of using the database from within an application.

Speaker: Eric Hanson Topic: Performance Tuning with Column Store Indexes Date: January 26, 2012, 11:00AM EDT SQL Server columnstore indexes and the vector-based batch mode of query execution are new in the SQL Server 2012 release, and can speed up data warehouse queries by 100X or more. In their sweet spot, columnstores give jaw-dropping performance, but there are limitations in the initial release where performance may not improve as much as the technology allows, unless you tune your application. This talk presents how to work around the main limitations in the columnstore feature to get consistently great performance. We’ll address how to compensate for query performance limitations for outer joins and union operations, data type restrictions, and the fact that columnstore indexes make the data read-only (except for the ability to switch in partitions). We’ll also discuss how to capitalize on the new segment elimination feature that can skip million-row chunks of a table with a constant-time check.

Speaker: Mike Davis Topic: Creating KPI's, Actions, and Calculations in SSAS Cubes Date: January 31, 2012, 11:00AM EDT Mike demonstrates different methods for KPI's, actions, and common calculations. After this session you will have a good understanding of how to build all of these functions in your SSAS Cube. Mike will show dynamic KPIs from a table, opening a URL with an Action, and some common MDX calculations.

Register Here!