I’m Speaking: SQL Saturday Chicago

It’s spring, and that means that speaking season is starting up again!  My first presentation of the year will be at SQL Saturday #291 in Chicago on April 26.  I’ll be presenting “SQL Server Features That Will Blow Your Mind!”, a new developer-focused session that covers four features added by Microsoft in recent versions that are sure to elicit “WOW! How’d you do that?” from the uninitiated:

  • window functions, which add new dimensions to aggregates (and new aggregates!) by dividing your query’s data into partitions (or “windows”) on-the-fly;
  • sparse columns, which allow you to store large numbers of nullable columns in very little space – and allow you to interact with them using XML;
  • filtered indexes, which enable creation of indexes that ignore unneeded values (such as nulls), thus reducing the size of the index and improving performance; and
  • snapshot isolation, which can eliminate blocking by reads without the dangers of dirty reads introduced by NOLOCK.

I plan to have a lot of demos to show you just how easy it can be to use all of these.  It’s going to be a fun hour!

In addition, SQL Saturday Chicago has almost 50 other sessions by top-grade speakers – and it’s all free.  See you there!