The SQLPASS Community Summit is one of the most exciting annual conferences for the SQL Server team. Bringing together thousands of professionals to talk about SQL Server is simply amazing. Last year I had the honor of standing on stage with Ted Kummert (Senior Vice President for the Business Platform Division @ Microsoft) during his keynote to demo an early prototype build of Application and Multi-Server Management. Standing in front of 2,500+ SQL Server fans is truly exhilarating.

For the past few months we’ve been working on our content for this year’s conference. The focus on SQL Server 2008 R2 will be intense, to say the least. One of the overriding themes this year is consolidation. In the sessions on consolidation we will be emphasizing the investments we’re making in R2 and Hyper-V. We have another session focusing on developing data-tier applications using Visual Studio 2010. 

In addition to the public break out sessions we conducting several private sessions. These private sessions are under NDA and include participants from the SQL Server MVP community as well as people representing companies part of the SQL Server Customer Advisory Network or SCAN. Over the past 5 years (my tenure with the SQL Server group) the emphasis on gathering customer feedback early in the development cycle has intensified.

These break out sessions provide a look into features on the plate for the next release. The sessions are a combination of PowerPoint slides and demos of early prototype builds. Participants are asked to fill out surveys to provide their input to our planning process. I can attest the feedback we receive in these sessions directly impacts the shape of features.

One of the absolute highlights for me, though, is interacting with you. Spending time hearing how you’re using the product, the challenges you face in your business, and how you see the industry changing are invaluable. Even though we may not be talking under NDA about future developments these conversations have a direct impact on the product. All of these data points are fed back into the planning process and impact the multitude of decisions we make throughout the development cycle.

This year I was asked again to participate in Ted’s keynote and I jumped at the opportunity to show off my team’s hard work. I’ll be demoing the latest (yet to be released CTP) build of SQL Server 2008 R2 along with the already release Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. The demo is absolutely rocking. Ted’s keynote is packed with demos all of them extremely cool – although I think ours is the coolest of the lot. There’s one demo near the end that’s sure to bring the house down. I won’t give it away so you’ll just have to come to the keynote and see it for yourself. But I’m certain it’ll be picked up by the blogging & twitter communities.

If you see me @ the conference don’t hesitate to come up and say hi and bend my ear about what you do for a living, what you like about the product and what we can do to make you more efficient and effective in your job.

Were you in Las Vegas last week? If you attended the SharePoint conference in the Mandalay Bay resort, you probably thought you were. But Las Vegas is famously a city of facades, illusions and well-kept secrets. Caesars Palace isn't really Rome, nor the Venetian, Venice. My favourite illusion is that much of what we think of as Las Vegas is actually not in the city at all, but in unincorporated Winchester and Paradise, NV. The city of Las Vegas itself starts just north of Sahara Avenue. So all you folks attending the SharePoint conference at the Mandalay Bay - you weren't even in Vegas, baby!

I was really in Vegas, for a couple of days. We stayed downtown on Fremont Street, visiting with Alison's vacationing parents, just before the conference, then shuffled up the strip to ritzier lodgings for the main event. It's not much of a boundary to cross, perhaps a formality in some ways, but nevertheless significant. Fremont street has its colourful fun, but it isn't the Strip: and The Four Seasons is surely not the Lady Luck.

I have recently been crossing other boundaries too. For one thing, I have a new role within Microsoft. Just like driving up from Las Vegas to the Strip, to the casual observer you may not notice much difference, but difference there is. Here's the change ...

I have always enjoyed being very close with customers, partners and the wider Business Intelligence community. Since I first joined Microsoft, back in 2001, I have been working in engineering teams, striving sometimes to keep up with the deeply technical side, but still trying to keep in touch with what our customers and partners needed in the real world. It has been a great role, but a difficult one to balance. So now, rather than being in a single vertical product team - Analysis Services, or Integration Services, for example - I'll be working in a cross-team role. My focus will be to help Microsoft articulate a vision for business intelligence, and to improving our technical engagement with analysts, partners and other teams. As part of this role, I'll still need to keep technically close to the development teams: still contributing to engineering execution and vision as I can. (I still have some patents up my sleeve!) Nevertheless, the role does change. I'll miss leading my group of Program Managers - but I'll still be working with them daily. Maybe I'll even miss the hassle of integrating trees of code, fighting bug fires, and juggling development and test resources. However, I have much to look forward to, especially as we enter a whole new area with our "managed self-service" approach to business intelligence.

If you want to keep up with my new role, and the various technical and community initiatives in which I'll be involved, please do read my blog here. It's a Microsoft blog, for sure: in the sense that it is focused on our products, and our issues. For example, my next post will cover our new PowerPivot product, explaining some of the thinking behind our direction, and behind the name. You can also read my other blog  where I'll be rather more expansive on issues of broader interest in the BI community. And you can follow me on Twitter: donalddotfarmer.

It's going to be fun. For me, better than Vegas

November is the month of conferences. There are four pretty major conferences going on and we have SQL Server Manageability sessions @ all of them. Here’s the run down:

• SQL PASS

  1. When: November 2-5, 2009
  2. Where: Seattle, Washington
  3. Site: http://summit2009.sqlpass.org/
  4. Sessions: 2 focused on SQL Server 2008 R2/Visual Studio 2010 Application and Multi-Server Management
• SQL Connections
  1. When: November 9-12, 2009
  2. Where: Las Vegas, Nevada
  3. Site: http://www.devconnections.com/shows/FALL2009SQL
  4. Sessions: 3 – 1 on SQL Server 2008 R2/Visual Studio 2010 (Application and Multi-Server Management) and 1 on SQL Server 2008 (automation with PowerShell)
• TechEd Europe
  1. When: November 9-13, 2009
  2. Where: Berlin, Germany
  3. Site: http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/
  4. Sessions: 3 – 1 on SQL Server 2008 R2/Visual Studio 2010 (Application and Multi-Server Management) and 2 on SQL Server 2008 (automation with PowerShell & Performance Monitoring & troubleshooting)
• PDC
  1. When: November 17-19, 2009
  2. Where: Los Angeles, California
  3. Site: http://microsoftpdc.com/
  4. Sessions: 1 focused on SQL Server 2008 R2/Visual Studio 2010 (Data-tier Application Development)

We also have a surprise in store @ SQLPASS during Ted Kummert’s keynote. Also @ PDC there’s a session on SQL Azure futures (“The future lifecycle of database development with SQL Azure”) that covers some of the future technology we’re exploring. If you’re @ PDC this is a must attend session. There is still space available @ all of these conferences. Unfortunately the only conference I’m going to make is SQLPASS. I was excited to go to SQL Connections but my schedule just won’t allow it. Each conference has a pretty amazing set of speakers with incredible knowledge in the area of managing SQL Server. If your schedule and budget permit you should pick a conference and go. I’m positive you’ll see a positive ROI.

As you may know we've announced that Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, will have commercial availability as of the first day of the upcoming Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles on November 17th, 2009.  In addition to data storage via Windows Azure, included in our offering will be SQL Azure.  I've been following the product team's progress with SQL Azure for quite some time now, given my long-term interest in, and professional use of, SQL Server. 

In fact, just this week the product group announced on the the SQL Azure blog, that the current build is feature-complete for PDC09 now.  The product team's most recent blog details features that have been added to the most current CTP, such as the ability to configure firewall (access) rules, support for bulk copy (mostly for initial data load-in), and more. I've been watching and waiting, eager to ask lots of detail questions of product group as we start our first phase of commercial availability.  Of course, the paramount questions are around security of your data in our cloud.  We have a large number of sessions at the upcoming PDC in Los Angels, which runs from November 17 to November 19.   The announced schedule to date already included 9 dedicated sessions on SQL Azure.  These sessions are being conducted by members of the SQL Azure product group team.

If you can't attend the PDC and want to get started learning the capabilities of SQL Azure, then I recommend downloading the October 2009 Windows Azure Platform Training Kit.  It includes power point decks, demos, hands on labs and more.  Of course this kit will be updated to reflect changes in the product as we add features.  There will also be a good bit of SQL Azure coverage at the upcoming SQL Pass Summit in Seattle from November 2 to 5th.  In addition, there will be sessions at TechEd, Europe in Berlin from November 9th to 13th.

An interesting new development is the recent update to the SQL Azure management portal.  The CTP access URL is changing as of PDC (from https://ctpportal.database.windows.net to https://sql.azure.com) and the portal itself has been updated to reflect the newly-added features of SQL Azure.

Due to the level of interest in SQL Azure (including my own interest), I have decided to write a technical book about the topic.  Readers of this blog will get to preview partial chapters, as I plan to begin the writing in December.  I intend to write about topics thtat will have interest for developers, ITPros and architects.  These will include development of .NET and non .NET front-end solutions (i.e. PHP, Java) which use SQL Azure as a partial or entire storage solutions, also deployment and management considerations such as auditing and synchronization between cloud and local copies of data stores.  Of course there will be a strong emphasis on security implementation best practices throughout the book.

I am quite interested in your feedback if you have worked with any version of the SQL Azure CTP (beta).  Take a minute to drop me a mail via this blog to tell me what you've liked or not liked about your experience so far.

By way of introduction, I run a team in SQL Server called Database Systems Group.  It’s the engineering team that builds the relational systems for SQL.  The single largest piece of this is the core RDBMS itself (usually referred to around here as The Engine), and the most closely-related components supporting that Engine but area also SQL-wide such as manageability (SSMS, SMO, etc.), and connectivity (ODBC, php, sql client, etc.).  My team also include our yet-to-be-shipped high-scale DW engine currently code-named Madison (this is the DATAllegro MPP DW solution that we acquired a bit over a year ago), new relational streaming technology that will be shipped as part of SQL Server 2008 R2, and the Gray Systems Lab in Madison, WI lead by David DeWitt – they do advanced development in the broad database space. 



“Because it’s everybody’s business.”  In the database space, this has never been more true.  Businesses are realizing the value of information – not just data, but information that can be leveraged not only by systems, but also presented to those who really need it to make the business more successful.  In the world now where internet search means you can know how many species of ants there are in Madagascar (418 according to the first result returned from Bing ;), knowledge workers have a high expectation for the availability of information to do their jobs.  For the business I am part of, this means, just off the top of my head, high-scale and performant DW, consistent and usable data models, connectivity between heterogeneous systems, closing the “last mile of BI” to get the information on the desktops, and making this all into a cohesive whole and productive developer platform.   It’s about an IT platform that will allow their business to operate more efficiently, and enable more innovation.