Well, it’s the final day of PASS Summit and the week’s final keynote! Today’s keynote will be delivered by Dr. David Dewitt! His speaking is the result of a user survey sent out by PASS earlier this year.

From Summit site:

You voted, and the results are in: Dr. David DeWitt will be speaking on Query Optimization 101 during the most anticipated keynote of PASS Summit 2010!

“In two short years, giving a keynote at the PASS Summit has become a highlight of my year,” noted Dr. DeWitt, Technical Fellow with Microsoft’s Jim Gray Systems Lab. “This year, I am excited to have the opportunity to talk about SQL query optimization, why it is hard to always produce good plans, and new technologies that offer the promise of better plans in future releases of SQL Server.”

Query optimization is the process of compiling a SQL query into an executable plan that is as efficient as possible. While the basic fundamentals for cost-based query optimization were first described in a seminal paper by Pat Selinger of IBM Research in 1979, optimizing complex queries continues to be very challenging 30 years later. In this talk, David DeWitt will describe the fundamentals of query optimization, why it remains a very hard problem today, and present several recent research results that promise to improve the quality of plans produced in the years to come.

David J. DeWitt is a Technical Fellow in the Microsoft Data and Storage Platform Division. DeWitt’s role is creating and leading the Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab, a new advanced development center in Madison, WI, for Microsoft, in association with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Sciences Department. DeWitt came to Microsoft from the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin, which he joined in September 1976 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He served as department chair from July 1999 to July 2004 and held the title of John P. Morgridge Professor of Computer Sciences when he retired from the University of Wisconsin.

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