Using SSIS 2012 for ETL in a Data Warehouse

Well, I feel great relief that my session has been completed, and completed successfully. The room was full with people on the floor and along the walls. That was great considering Peter Meyers and Devin Knight had done similar sessions 2 different times before mine. Visual Studio blew up once (at the beginning) and I made a mistake with one OLEDB connection, but was able to recover both times. I had 2 attendees keep track of all the new features of 2012 I demonstrated, and one said 22 and the other had 26. Not bad for 75 minutes. Doing live demos of SSIS 2012 is not the easiest task, but I think attendees rather see demos than slides.

Tuesday – community involvement

Tuesday morning began with with PASS Virtual Chapter leaders, then SQLSaturday leaders and volunteers. The amount of people in these meetings were more than double the amount last year. Folks, there is a lot going on with the PASS SQL Server community. Please get involved. The afternoon was with House of Bricks talking about the methodology, best practice and monitoring of SQL Server on VMWare. I was expecting more technical demos, but it was still worth my time.

After some exercise, I helped man the Virtual Chapter area of the Welcome Reception and signed up 10 or so new members. The time was also spent talking to many attendees I knew or just meet. Hearing other SQL Server professionals talk about their work is indeed interesting and great for knowledge sharing. The room was overflowing and time went by quickly. The evening concluded with the annual SQLServerCentral.com Casino night. Of course, I lost all my play money chips, but the conversations with DBAs was worth it.

Wednesday

This morning started in the PASS Community center at 7AM. Right next to the dining area help with grabbing a quick bite. As I finished at my table, Buck Woody walked up to continue the conversation with the First Timers. I spent some in the speaker room rehearsing my demos for a 3PM session. Carlos Bossy came in as well as Matt Mason. We talked SSIS and Data Modeling which was great. I missed the Keynote, but here is a good link to a BI perspective view – Marco Russo.

The first session was Peter Meyers and Matthew Roche presenting on 10 Extraordinary Things to Achieve in SSIS. The duo was a great combination with a good talker and a demo guru. Lunch was at the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group table where I meet up with Patrick LeBlanc and Mark Verret. There was @SQLCajun and others from Mississippi at the table. Brian McDonald came by to talk with Patrick. Mark’s colleague was there from LSU and talked about us speaking about real world uses on Microsoft BI with their students.

The day concluded with SSAS Storage with Stacia Misner then my presentation at 3PM. The last session I attendee was SQL Server and SharePoint: Best Frienimies(sp?). A SQLCAT member did the presentation and she related it back to her DBA days. I am still not convinced about some of the Best Practices with maintenance but I understand more about why the want us to follow these suggestions 

Thursday

I am starting the morning in the PASS community lounge at 7AM helping new people get involved. Next is the massage chair in the Seattle Convention center. I am hoping to spend an hour there.

The first session is with Carlos Bossy who I meet last year with Steve Jones and he even came to Baton Rouge for our 3rd SQLSaturday. He is going to talk about planning and designing the underlying data base model that is needed for an effect Semantic Model. Next, I am live blogging and tweeting during the WIT Luncheon sponsored by SQLSentry. I rest of the day is up in the air, but the evening concludes with a Microsoft Appreciation event at Seattle’s Music Experience museum.