A combination of SQL Server, IBM, Azure, RDS, AI, Security, Admin/Architecture, and so much more, the SSWUG.org Fall Virtual Conference is a must-see event for any database professional in 2017. 


With speakers from all over the world with backgrounds in various technologies, our selection of session are vetted carefully for originality and relevance to bring the highest quality event possible to you, our audience. 


ONLINE REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

To keep on top of the changes in technology and the industry, attending classes, conferences, and webcasts has become a necessity. SSWUG.org puts together two conferences a year to help you get all that information in one place - allowing you to stay sharp and still have time to do your work. (Thanks, boss!)

SSWUG.org is hosting their Fall Virtual Conference on October 24th and 25th, 2017. We know that you have a busy schedule - which is why we would never require you to fly across the country to attend the event of the season! Because of this, this event will take place entirely online, for you to enjoy from your office, home, or anywhere that has an internet connection. 

Also - because we want this event to be available to all, we've made it free! If your job requires continued education or you like to stay sharp, this is the event for you. 

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Content and schedule are subject to change without notice.

Sessions


All times are Eastern Time Printable Schedule || Times, presenters and sessions are subject to change.

10/24/2017

9:00 AM
-to-
10:00 AM

Track:
 Room 1
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Industry Trends, and a Security Discussion with a Leading Expert


Stephen  Wynkoop

 

Stephen will be presenting on overall industry trends with data and databases, and will be having a discussion with Duncan McAlyn (@infosecwar) regarding the larger security picture and things to think about, and take action on, going forward.

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10/24/2017

10:00 AM
-to-
11:15 AM

Track:
 Room 1
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Chatbots Design Patterns


Vikram  Sharma

 

Chatbots are looked upon as the next big thing. Industry experts have forecasted the chatbots to take over from apps as the new niche skill. Given the never before emphasis on artificial intelligence and self-learning programs is aiding to this ascent of chatbots. The design and production of interactive chatbots presents new possibilities, enabling the development and creation of new niche markets and areas that can be made so much better through chatbots. We will go over what is chatbot and the building blocks of a chatbot. We will also cover the common patterns of a chatbot design so you can figure out if a chatbot is for you and if yes, which one is the best fit. We will briefly touch upon the best practices to implement your chatbot idea.

10/24/2017

10:00 AM
-to-
11:00 AM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Powershell


Ben  Miller

 

 

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10/24/2017

11:00 AM
-to-
12:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Building a Home Grown Auditing Infrastructure for SQL Server


K. Brian  Kelley

 

Not everyone has the budget for 3rd party tools to provide audit / security information on their SQL Server environment. If you are in this situation, what do you need to build? What information should you be capturing in order to know what's going on for each of your SQL Servers? How do you gather that information and store it? How do you report on it? In this presentation we'll answer each of those questions, presenting options you can build yourself. We'll look for the most efficient solutions because if you don't have budget, you likely don't have allocated time except for what you can carve out amidst your other responsibilities. Knowledge of T-SQL and Powershell is expected.

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10/24/2017

11:15 AM
-to-
12:30 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Social Media Mining and Sentiment Analysis


Vikram  Sharma

 

Humans are social animals, a lot of decisions in our lives are taken based on what other people prefer or choose. A very important part / way to acquire knowledge is to keep opinions of similar and like-minded people handy. In some cases the reverse is also true. With the growing availability and popularity of information-rich sources on the social media, new opportunities have presented themselves that one can employ to quickly test the waters, predict and correct the strategy to suit the current sentiment. Opinion mining and sentiment analysis, which deals with the computational treatment of opinion, sentiment, and subjectivity in text, has come up in leaps and bounds and is widely used across industries to make decisions and audit the current strategy. We will go over the basics of social media mining and the different methods to perform sentiment and opinion mining and how-to draw meaningful insights from this mining. I will take an example and demonstrate the concept using python and twitter feed. We will also touch upon popular applications of this concept and the impact it made.

10/24/2017

12:00 PM
-to-
1:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: How I Use PowerBI as a DBA


Tjay  Belt

 

Microsoft’s PowerBI is the new hotness. In this session you will get your hands dirty and dive into PowerBI and create an actual report, with actual data. You will get to learn from examples from what a DBA has done to implement PowerBI in his shop and make his data accessible.
As a DBA, we often need to collect and display data in a friendly and interactive fashion. We will play with some PowerShell to collect data from several systems, store this data in an Azure DB in the Cloud, then point PowerBI at this data to display and interact with said data. You will learn a little about PowerShell, Azure SQL DB, PowerBI, and how to make these work for you.
You will be given permissions to an Azure DB, and get connected to this source. You will also need to have PowerBI desktop downloaded and installed. We will be using this to create the report during the session. So please come prepared to interact with the internet, with a cloud based database you will be provided, and PowerBI Desktop.

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10/24/2017

12:30 PM
-to-
1:30 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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THE LEADERSHIP ORBIT™: Attracting the Right Followers


Laura  Rose

 

Many people have passion; many people have goals; but the leaders of this generation need more. 

 

They need to have a vision, mission, a strategy or plan of action, execution and the desire for continuous improvement of the plan and execution.T

 

This presentation introduces the idea of using the Law of Attraction and The Leadership OrbitTM  to attract the right followers

This presentation will answer the following:

 

•What differentiates leaders?
•What is The Leadership OrbitTM?
•How can The Leadership OrbitTM be used to achieve your goals?

10/24/2017

1:00 PM
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2:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Advanced TSQL Querying


Mitchell  Pearson

 

Do you know the basics of T-SQL and want to take your skills to the next level? If so this fast paced, demo-packed session is for you! In this session you will learn how to use advanced T-SQL concepts to quickly solve some of the common business problems. In this session Mitchell reviews CTEs, Window Functions, and more!

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10/24/2017

1:30 PM
-to-
2:30 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Remote Diagnosis & AI in Healthcare


Saumya  Sanjeev

 

This session covers the need and relevance of Remote Diagnosis & AI in Healthcare. It discusses case studies currently underway as well as a brief outline on the approach.

10/24/2017

2:00 PM
-to-
3:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Everything you wanted to know about Stored Procedures


Jeffrey  Garbus

 

Everything you wanted to know about Stored Procedures but were afraid to ask. 

This session talks about stored procedure creation management, performance, and transaction management. We also review and make formal recommendations on optimal coding techniques and mechanisms for managing return values.

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10/24/2017

2:30 PM
-to-
3:30 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Query Store and Query Optimization on SQL Server 2017


Dean  Savovic

 

In this session, I will talk about advantages of Query Store, features, configuration and query optimization using Query Store on SQL Server 2017. Session will also cover how one can monitor query performance, how Query Store gathers data and which are the best practices for using Query Store. During the session there will be various demos.

10/24/2017

3:00 PM
-to-
4:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Introduction to the SQL Server Query Store


Brandon  Preece

 

Don't you wish there was a recording of everything running on your SQL Server instance tracking performance data? Well in SQL Server 2016, Microsoft has introduced a new feature called the Query Store. This session will go over how the query store works, how you configure it for your workloads and how to use the information to track performance data. When you leave this session, you will know how to get started using the Query Store.

10/24/2017

3:30 PM
-to-
4:30 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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SQL Server Containers and Clones


Paul  Stanton

 

“Containers and Clones for SQL Server Development and Test”

Microsoft is emphasizing the use of containers for development and test on SQL Server 2017, and new solutions from Red Gate and Windocks add support for containers and SQL Server database database cloning, for the full range of the SQL Server family.

We’ll explore use of Docker based tooling for delivery of container environments, and their pros and cons. We’ll also look at SQL Server cloning, and how clones enable Dev and Test teams to work on large database environments for containers as well as existing SQL Server instances.

10/24/2017

4:00 PM
-to-
5:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: SQL Server 2016 Security: Why to Upgrade


Tommy  Mullaney

 

 

Sponsored by:

10/25/2017

9:00 AM
-to-
10:00 AM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: All about Joins


Jeffrey  Garbus

 

A natural follow-up to the index selection sessions, this talks about index selection for join performance, identifying join types, looking at optimizer decision making for inner, outer, and self-joins. There is also a section on a self-join cookbook for those who aren’t comfortable writing them.

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10/25/2017

10:00 AM
-to-
11:00 AM

Track:
 Room 1
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Security "Best" Practices That Aren't


K. Brian  Kelley

 

You want to secure SQL Server. As with every established technology, you find a lot of security “best practices” to implement. The number of different recommendations can be overwhelming. Some even contradict others. If you’re familiar with auditors and meeting compliance requirements, you are probably thinking that some of these best practices contribute nothing to security. We just do them to check a box. So what are those “best” practices for SQL Server security that really aren’t? In this session we’ll look at some of the recommendations that are out there and why they aren’t effective controls.

10/25/2017

10:00 AM
-to-
11:00 AM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: How to be a Great DBA


Jeffrey  Garbus

 

This presentation, for beginner to intermediate DBAs, those interested in becoming a DBA, or anybody who wonders what their DBAs do (or should be doing), discusses both technical and personal aspects of being an integral part of the IT team.

10/25/2017

11:00 AM
-to-
12:00 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Automating SQL Server Installation and Configuration


K. Brian  Kelley

 

In the current fast paced environment that is information technology, we want to build fast and we want to build consistently. When it comes to SQL Server, that means automation. We want to automate the whole build process, from the server deployment to the after installation scripts. In this session we’ll look at what you can automate, how to do it, and how to include some options for customization using a template-based approach. We’ll also look at how to set specific configuration and attempt to maintain them beyond installation.

10/25/2017

11:00 AM
-to-
12:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Indexing for performance


Jeffrey  Garbus

 

This session for beginners or experts discusses index structures and how the server uses them to optimize queries. With this knowledge, you can tune queries BETTER than the Tuning Adviser.

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10/25/2017

12:00 PM
-to-
1:00 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Introducing Microservices - CANCELLED


Joydip  Kanjilal

 

Microservices is an architectural approach for building flexible, extensible, independently deployable services with each of these services running and communicating using lightweight communication mechanisms.

This presentation helps the reader to learn what Microservices are, provides a high level architectural overview of Microservices, and discusses the benefits, drawbacks and challenges of Microservices. Lastly, it illustrates how one can build Microservices using .NET Core.

10/25/2017

12:00 PM
-to-
1:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: SQL Server 2016 SP1 Changes the Game: Things You Can Do Now That Were Enterprise-Only Before


Charlie  Arehart

 

As some may know, the recent release of SQL Server 2016 SP1 included a major change that enables nearly all features to work in all editions. In other words, there used to be features that were Enterprise-only (or Trial or Dev), such that folks on editions below that (Standard, Web, Express, and Express LocalDB) could NOT use, at all. Or you may try things in Trial/Dev only to find they didn't work in production if using one of those other editions, or Azure SQL DB. Now you can use many features previously limited to Enterprise-only. This opens doors to capabilities which will be very helpful, even amazing, to many.

And this is not just about features that are new in SQL Server 2016 but also some features from previous editions which are also now available in editions other than Enterprise (of course, you need to be using SQL Server 2016 SP1 to get the benefit of being able to use such features on an edition below Enterprise).

In this talk, veteran server troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will outline, discuss, and in some cases demonstrate the features that are now available. He’ll also indicated the specific editions where they are, as well as why they are so important, and he’ll conclude with some related changes of interest, all of which can be considered before leveraging or planning for this important change of functionality.

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10/25/2017

1:00 PM
-to-
2:00 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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New features in .NET Core 2


Joydip  Kanjilal

 

NET Core is a light-weight, extensible, cross-platform, and open source managed software framework from Microsoft. The software giant has recently released .NET 2. This session discusses what .NET Core is all about, differences between .NET Framework and .NET Core, why .NET Core useful, where it is applicable and the new features and benefits in .NET Core 2. Lastly, it presents a discussion on how we can get started working with .NET Core 2 in Visual Studio 2017.

10/25/2017

1:00 PM
-to-
2:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: The Data Warehouse of the Future


Stan  Geiger

 

So you think you have the ultimate Data Warehouse...well think again. The landscape or should I say the data lake is changing constantly. We are getting data from all over the place. How do we make it available and relevant for the consumers of a data warehouse. Is Kimbell obsolete now, what about unstructured data, how about the gazillioin rows of click data, etc. So the data and BI architects are all on suicide watch. Well its not really that bad. Microsoft has woken up and seen all that is going and has brought functionality to SQL Server to solve some of these issues. This presentation provides an overview of technologies such as Polybase, Temoporal Tables, Columnstore Index, In memory tables, JSON support, etc. that can be utilized to build the data warehouse of the future.

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10/25/2017

2:00 PM
-to-
3:15 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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New features in Entity Framework Core 2


Joydip  Kanjilal

 

Entity Framework Core is a lightweight, extensible, and cross-platform version of Entity Framework - Microsoft's flagship ORM. This session presents an introduction to the core concepts in Entity Framework Core followed by a discussion on the new features and enhancements in Entity Framework Core 2 with code examples and demo to illustrate the concepts covered.

10/25/2017

2:00 PM
-to-
3:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: End-to-End Troubleshooting Checklist


Kevin  Kline

 

Learning how to detect, diagnose and resolve performance problems in SQL Server is tough.  Often, years are spent learning how to use the tools and techniques that help you detect when a problem is occurring, diagnose the root-cause of the problem, and then resolve the problem. 
 
In this session, attendees will see demonstrations of the tools and techniques which make difficult troubleshooting scenarios much faster and easier, including:
 
•           XEvents, Profiler/Traces, and PerfMon
•           Using Dynamic Management Views (DMVs)
•           Advanced Diagnostics Using Wait Stats
•           Reading SQL Server execution plan
 
Every DBA needs to know how to keep their SQL Server in tip-top condition, and you’ll need skills the covered in this session to do it.

Sponsored by:

10/25/2017

3:00 PM
-to-
4:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: What’s New for In-Memory OLTP in SQL Server 2016


Jos  de Bruijn

 

SQL Server 2016 greatly improves the performance and ease of use for In-Memory OLTP. In this session we give a recap of the In-Memory OLTP feature, discussing scenarios as well as expected performance improvements. We then go over the enhancements in performance, programmability, as well as manageability, that went into SQL Server 2016 as well as Azure SQL Database.

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10/25/2017

3:15 PM
-to-
4:15 PM

Track:
 Room 1
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Adopting an Enterprise Data Security Approach to Safeguarding Data Assets


Scott  Simmons

 

In a review of recent data breaches - it is clear that traditional mechanisms for data protection are simply inadequate. The emergence of the cloud, micro-services, social media has necessitated a re-evaluation of how to safeguard data assets especially PII (Personally Identifiable Information), PHI (Protected Health Information), and PCI (Payment Card Information). Regulatory statutes are additionally influencing these requirements including GDPR, HIPAA, and Privacy Shield. This presentation will review the current challenges and the requirements arising from these new trends providing an action plan for an enterprise data security approach based on Data-Centric Audit and Protection (DCAP) solutions.

10/25/2017

4:00 PM
-to-
5:00 PM

Track:
 Room 2
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BEST OF: Enterprise Data Lakes: Design Patterns and Anti-Patterns


Vikram  Sharma

 

Every data centric organization wants to setup their own Enterprise data lake for their needs. The motivation may vary from democratization of data to transparent and centralized access control to just staying up to speed with the buzz. With the recent data explosion, organizations are generating massive amount of data in a variety of forms and velocity. Consequently, the need to maintain a centralized single source of truth that can be utilized to suit multiple needs is greater than ever. However, this is not a one size fits all situation. The needs are different so are the mechanisms and the type of data. We will explore the underlying concepts of an enterprise data lake, common patterns of usage and how to identify what works and what does not for the current need. We will also touch upon the building blocks of data lakes and a comparison and contrast of the available technologies.

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Founded in 1999, SSWUG.ORG is an industry-leading website that provides news and information on data management, collaboration software, development tools and cloud computing to more than 550,000 registered users. Events and instructional videos are regularly provided, and in-depth articles are posted daily onto the site. For more information, visit www.sswug.org.


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