Victor Isakov has decided to spin up a new SQL Server user group that will be meeting on the 1st Wednesday of each month, at Westpac Place in the city. He describes the group as focussing on best practices, optimisation, design and implementation and is aiming directly at the local corporate market.
Access to Westpac Place will be quickest if you have pre-registered so Victor is asking you to let him know you're coming by sending him an email to victor@sqlserversolutions.com.au.
The first three meetings for 2009 are as follows:
Topic: DBA: Best Practices for All DBAs to Follow
Date: 4th February
Description: As the popularity of SQL Server continues to grow, so is the demand for new SQL Server DBAs. Unfortunately, you can't "go to school" to learn how to become a DBA. Most DBAs learn from books, seminars, short classes, and trial and error. This session is designed to encourage a cross-pollination of ideas and best practices between DBAs from different organizations. It includes best practices from the trenches which can only be obtained through experience.
Topic: DBD: A Comprehensive Guide to Indexing in SQL Server
Date: 4th March
Description: With the release of SQL Server 2008 the database developer has more choices in their arsenal for optimally indexing database solutions. In this session we will explore the different indexing technologies that are available in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008, such as included, composite and filtered indexes. We will discuss the primary design considerations and tradeoffs made when implementing an indexing strategy and present more "exotic" scenarios such as how to implement custom hash indexes, how to combine filtered indexes with sparse columns, partitioned indexes and how to implement partitioned views with different underlying table indexes.
Topic: ARCH: Reducing Your Storage Cost in SQL Server 2008
Date: 1st April
Description: Are increasing storage costs hurting your bottom line as data sizes keep growing throughout your organization? In this session, we explore how SQL Server can help you lower your storage costs. We start with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 partitioning to transparently migrate older data to lower-cost storage tiers over time. We then discuss new storage cost-saving functionality in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 such as data compression, backup compression, and sparse columns, filtered indexes, file stream which can get you to 50% or more reduction in storage requirements for typical applications. Throughout the session, we share experiences, insights, and best practices from SQL Server customers and Microsoft-internal deployments. Learn how to make good use of these technologies in combination.