I’ll be speaking in Portland, OR and Tumwater, WA the week of February 8th, 2010. The details, and the session descriptions, are below. Hope to see you there.
Oregon SQL Developers User Group
Topic: Introduction to Graphical Execution Plans
Date: Wednesday, February 10, 2010
When: 6:30 PM
Where: KOIN Tower, Second Floor Conference Room, 222 SW Columbia ST, Portland, OR 97201
Olympia Area SQL Server Users Group
Topic: How and When to Use Indexed Views
Date: Thursday, February 11, 2010
When: 2:30 PM
Where: Labor and Industries, Room S117, 7273 Linderson Way SW, Tumwater, WA 98501
Session Descriptions
Introduction to Graphical Execution Plans
One of the black arts of being a DBA is learning how to read and interpret graphical execution plans. This is an important skill, as knowing how to read and interpret graphical execution plans can help the DBA tune queries for optimal performance. Without this crucial knowledge, the DBA won’t be able identify potential query problems, nor understand how to fix them.
In this introductory level session, which is designed for DBAs with little or no knowledge of query execution plans, you will learn why execution plans are important, how they are created, learn about the different execution plan formats, discover different ways to produce them, find out about the difference between estimated and actual execution plans, and most importantly, learn the basics of how to read and interpret graphical execution plans. This includes taking a look at ten of the most commonly used execution plan operators, and finding out exactly what they mean.
This session is filled with demonstrations, and assumes attendees have a basic foundation of DBA knowledge (including indexing). After attending the session, attendees will be able to return to work and immediately put what they have learned into practice.
How and When to Use Indexed Views
Indexed views are an often misunderstood and underused feature of SQL Server that more DBAs should learn to master. Essentially, an indexed view is a standard view that has been materialized (made physical) by adding a unique clustered index to it. When used appropriately, they can greatly speed query performance.
In this session, you will learn the features and benefits of using indexed views, learn where indexed views work best, learn how to create indexed views, and review indexed view best practices.
This session is filled with demonstrations, and assumes attendees have a basic foundation of DBA knowledge, especially the T-SQL SELECT statement. After attending the session, attendees will be able to return to work and immediately put what they have learned into practice.
