10:25 AM – And that's it for the week! Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to order the Summit DVDs. David's keynote alone was worth it.

10:20 AM – Time's up for David. Mentioning key points. Waaaaay too much information on the slides to type before he's moved on to the next one. Other bloggers doing live keynotes were smart enough to grab photos of the screen. Hopefully they'll post the contents.

10:05 AM – David's comparing different compression techniques. Run Length Encoding, Bit-Vector Encoding, and Dictionary Encoding.

10:00 AM – Now talking about compression in column stores. Basically it trades I/O cycles for CPU cycles (remember that CPUs have gotten 1000x faster while disks have only gotten 65x faster).

9:51 AM – Boiling down the row store vs. column store discussion, basically we're looking at a 7X performance improvement in column store architecture for certain types of queries. "Select * from …" will never be faster though. Best bet: Store some data row wise and some data column wise.

9:45 AM – L2 cache misses are due to row store architecture. Now David's talking about column store architecture.

9:43 AM – David talking about why we have L2 cache misses in CPU when fetching data off disk. Highly technical, and my head is beginning to hurt!

9:36 AM – OK, lots of technicals on CPUs now. Too hard to write about what he's talking about. It's deep. Really deep.

9:35 AM – Now talking CPU trends. This is awesome stuff, really. Best keynote so far in my opinion.

9:34 AM – 1980, sequential/random 5:1; 2009 sequential/random 33:1. Takeaway: RDBMS must avoid random disk I/O when possible.

9:32 AM – Incredibly inexpensive drives & processors have made it possible to collect, store, and analyze huge quantities of data. But considering the metric transfer bandwidth/byte, when relative capacities are factored in, drives are 150X SLOWER today.

9:30 AM – After 30 years of CPU and memory improvements, relative performance of CPUs and disk are totally out of whack in terms of performance. The benefits from a 1,000x improvement in CPU performance and memory sizes are almost negated by the 10x in disk accesses/second. David thinks that SSDs will change our lives in this area. (Side note, I've got some GOOD stuff coming on SSDs soon. Stay tuned!)

9:27 AM – Drilling down into disk trends now. 10,000 x capacity, 65x transfer rates, but the BIG change is in seek times.

9:24 AM – Going back to 1980, comparing hardware then to hardware today. A LOT has changed: improvements of 2,000x CPU, 1,000x CPU Caches, 1,000X memory, & 10,000x disk.

9:21 AM – This is going to be a really deep dive into technical stuff: trends in CPU, memory, disk, and how they impact design. Disclaimer: This is an academic talk – no marketing speak (yay!)

9:20 AM – No product announcements, no motorcycles, but already a lot of humor. This is going to be interesting.

9:18 AM – Bill back on stage, introducing Dr. David DeWitt, Technical Fellow at Microsoft. He's going to present "From 1 to 1000 MIPS"

9:18 AM – Dell Keynote over…not a lot to mention, honestly.

9:05 AM – More talk about disaster recovery…(BTW, we're a room full of DBAs at PASS. I sure hope we all understand disaster recovery)

8:59 AM – Benefits of configuration management:

• Provides clear picture of the SQL Server Environment
• Improves operational efficiency
• Drives priority for SQL Server Disaster Recovery and Consolidation

8:55 AM – Patrick talking about configuration management…types of data to collect (e.g. Name of server, Server Properties, CPU, Location Information, OS Version, SQL Server Version, etc). Basically stuff that anybody in IT should already know and be collecting.

8:50 AM – PASS business out of the way, now Patrick Ortiz from Dell's Infrastructure Consulting Services coming onstage to talk about "Managing SQL Server In The Enterprise"

8:49 AM – Thursday's To-Do List:

• SQL Server Clinic
• Hands-On Labs
• Eat lunch with regional and local Chapter Leaders
• Sign up for one of tomorrow's Post-Cons
• Order Summit 2009 DVDs for $125
• Submit your session and Summit evals
• Drop comments & questions in the Suggestion Box

8:48 AM – Announcing 2010 PASS Summit, November 8-10 in Seattle again. Register now for $995. No contract signed for 2011 yet; feedback on location will be solicited.

8:47 AM – And now the new executive board: Rushabh Mehta (President), Bill Graziano (Executive VP), Rick Heiges (VP, Marketing), and Wayne Snyder (Immediate Past President)

8:46 AM – Bill introducing new board members Brian Moran, Jeremiah Peschka, and Tom LaRock.

8:45 AM – Wayne is tearing up telling stories about Kevin…Kevin receiving a standing ovation as he receives his award for 10 years of service.

8:44 AM – Kevin taking the stage now. Wayne Snyder joining in to present Kevin with a special award for his service.

8:43 AM – BIll thanking outgoing PASS board members Pat Wright, Greg Lowe, and Kevin Kline. Special video tribute playing for Kevin's years of service to PASS. Big applause for Kevin.

8:40 AM – Bill Graziano, PASS VP of Marketing, taking the stage now. Promises this will be the shortest keynote of the week. Big applause.

8:38 AM – I'm back for the final day of the 2009 PASS Summit. Today is the Dell sponsored keynote. Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" is blaring through the speakers as videos from the conference play on the big screens.