The planning team of SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando and OPASS are proud to announce that there will be a pre-conference seminar for only $99 featuring Database Design expert, Louis Davidson (@DrSQL), on Friday October 15th.  The seminar will run from 9am to 4pm with lunch provided.  You can register here.  Here is the abstract for the seminar:

Database design is a seemingly natural process, lending itself to everyone trying to do it themselves, from an administrative assistant with a spreadsheet to a C# programmer with a copy of SQL Server Express. Unfortunately the finer points of excellent database design are not intuitively obvious and the difference between building a spreadsheet and a solid enterprise database is similar to the difference between building a doghouse and a 2 story house, or even the Empire State Building. In order to design a database correctly, there are several things you need to understand, including some basic understanding of relational theory, gathering and applying requirements, normalization, etc. Even then, while having the knowledge of fundamentals is more than many database designers have, it only the start. In this workshop, we will go to the next level and get our hands dirty designing databases too. We will structure the day with an extended session of database design fundamentals followed by designing several databases as a class, in groups, and individually. This will be followed up with another extended session on some advanced topics about database design patterns and practices and more design time.

In the past we have just selected someone to come and do the pre-conference seminar, but this year we opened it up to anyone who could present a full-day seminar and had the OPASS membership vote on the topics submitted.  We had 7 topics submitted and each one was excellent, but Louis’ submission was the winner in a very close vote.

I know Louis and have sat in on his database design sessions at the 2009 PASS Summit and SQLSaturday #41 – Atlanta and I learned something new at each session.  Louis is a knowledgeable, funny and seasoned presenter, you won’t be bored and you’ll learn something that you can take back to the office and use.  I hope that you’ll have the opportunity to attend this seminar and then come to SQLSaturday the next day as well.