Rick Heiges

24 Hours of PASS - BA Style

2013-01-29T16:04:00Z

Tomorrow will mark another chapter in the 24 Hours of PASS series.I am involved once again - this time in a moderator role. The event begins at 8am ET for me. I will be introducing Alberto Ferrari who will be speaking on "Excel 2013 Power Pivot in Action" which is a great self-service BI story. This 24hop event will be in a different format. 12 hours of Live webcasts followed by 12 hours of on-demand webcasts from the previous 12 hours. All sessions will be available for viewing on Feb 11, 2013....(read more)

Is the SAN dying???

2012-12-12T00:55:00Z

Is the SAN dying? The reason that I ask this question is that MSFT has unleashed technologies this year that point in that direction Always ON Availability Groups shuns shared storage Windows 2012 has Storage Replication Technology that does not require a SAN Windows 2012 has Hyper-V Replica Technology that does not require a SAN PDW v2 continues to reinforce the approach to avoid shared storage I'm not saying that SAN technology does not have its place or does not have benefits inherent to the beast....(read more)

Blog Posts from Prepping for Last Year's Summit

2012-10-18T10:58:00Z

Last year, I had a series of blog posts that matched up with a webcast I did targeting First Timers to the PASS Summit 2011. Here is a link to the final blog post which is a summary of those posts and links to the main points in the series. A good deal of the information in those posts are still relevant. I am in the process of updating the webcast and will be presenting the information again this year on Oct 25, 2012 at 11am ET. There is a lot of great information out there for first timers that...(read more)

SQLPASS BoD Polls Close this Friday

2012-10-10T15:59:00Z

Research, Contemplate, Vote. In case you didn't hear, there is a campaign going on that impacts the PASS Organization and the SQL Community. If you were a PASS member before June 1, 2012, you should have received a ballot link via email. Polls close at 3pm PT on Friday, Oct 12, 2012. I am fortunate to know all 5 candidates for this year's election and count them among my friends. The problem that I have is that I only have 3 votes to cast. At this point, I have decided on 2 of my 3 votes. Since I...(read more)

PASS Board of Directors Election - Making Progress

2012-09-26T11:21:00Z

It is almost time to cast your vote in this year's PASS BoD Elections. Things have changed considerably since the first PASS BoD election that I participated in. That was in 2001. I hadn't even been to a Summit or even a chpater meeting yet. I had registered for the PASS Summit 2001 (which was postponed to Jan 2002 btw). Back then, the elections were held at the summit and on paper, but there was no summit that year. If you wanted to vote, you needed to print out a ballot and fax it in. I think that...(read more)

Another Way to Learn SQL Server

2012-09-20T23:03:00Z

Since 2004, I have been on the Advisory Board for several continuing education certificate programs for the University of Washington. You might know some of the other Advisory Board Memebrs - check it out. The Advisory Board meets very infrequently and is asked for "advice" (not direction) on various aspects of the program. Generally speaking, courses that are taught for a degree are non-platform specific. Continuing Education courses and certificate programs are more product focused. As you can...(read more)

September 12 in San Fran

2012-09-12T02:04:00Z

Just a reminder that I will be speaking at the SF UG SQL Server User Group on Sep 12. Here is a link with all of the details. If you are in the area, It would be great to see you!...(read more)

Sep 10 Week - I'll be on the West Coast Speaking in Irvine and San Fran

2012-09-06T17:49:00Z

In my role as a Solutions Architect for Scalability Experts, I often get to present to customers about the work that we performed. Unfortunately, this is often on short notice and I can't coordinate a trip to participate in a User Group Meeting. Next week, I was able to coordinate my west coast trip to be able to present. I am heading to Irvine at the MTC on Sepember 11 and San Francisco at the MSFT offices on Sep 13 to speak to customers who want to learn more about SQL Server 2012.To register for...(read more)

Presenting at the San Francisco SQL Server User Group - 12-Sep-2012

2012-08-15T22:25:00Z

I have a business trip scheduled out far enough in advance for a change. I was able to schedule a presentation at the San Francisco SQL Server User Group on Sep 12 about SQL Server Consolidation Strategies. If you will be in the SF area on Sep 12, I invite you to attend ar just drop by to say hello. You can find out more about the group at http://www.meetup.com/The-San-Francisco-SQL-Server-Meetup-Group/ Hope to see you there!...(read more)

Comparing Standard Editions of SQL Server

2012-07-10T12:00:00Z

Recently, I've been speaking with customers about upgrading SQL Server. At times, some customers have a lot of Standard Edition SQL Server 2005 / 2008 / 2008R2 in their organization and they want to see the features they get when upgrading to SQL Server 2012. Last week, I sent out some tweets to the #sqlhelp hashtag to see if someone has already put together a document or blog post about comparing the Standard Editions. I was unable to discover anything out there that really focuses just on Standard...(read more)

NomCom Time

2012-06-12T22:00:00Z

Well, it is official... there is a race for the community seats on the PASS NomCom. I am very pleased to see that we have 12 people who decided to put their names forward for this task. This is largely a thankless job that takes a great deal of time, judgement, and consideration. I have put my name forward as one of those people who would like to take on this task and serve PASS (and the greater SQL Community) in this effort. You can find out more about me and the other candidates for the NomCom...(read more)

Speaking at Atlanta.MDF on March 12

2012-03-08T03:55:00Z

I am fortunate enough to be speaking to a user group with a really cool name - Atlanta.MDF (Microsoft Database Forum). Although I visit Atlanta often, it usually involves running from one councourse to another and rarely do I get the chance to visit the user group. I have made it to the user group on several occassions in the past, but it has been several years. This will be my first presentation to the group. I will be speaking about Database Consolidation - something I have been doing for years....(read more)

Rick Review: SQLTeach - SQL345 - 10-Mar-2010 - Kimberly Tripp

2012-02-15T05:17:00Z

SQLTeach (Part of the DevTeach Conferences in Canada) has enjoyed success for many years. I enjoyed the opportunity to speak at and attend SQLTeach at various times over the years. Since SQLTeach is part of DevTeach, the "feel" of the event is very different from PASS or SQLRally or even a SQL Saturday where SQL is the primary focus. It does however afford an opportunity for me to understand the challenges of those who need to work with SQL either in a direct or indirect manner. SQLTeach / DevTeach...(read more)

Rick Review: Day 3 Keynote PASS Summit 2011 - Big Data-What's the Big Deal?

2012-02-10T13:40:00Z

I recently did a Rick Review of the Day 3 Keynote from the 2008 PASS Community Summit that featured Dr. DeWitt speaking on new technology that ended up in the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) edition of SQL Server 2008 R2. I decided to also listen again to the Day 3 Keynote from the 2001 PASS Community Summit. While I listened intently to the keynote on Day 3 of this past summit, something seemed to be somewhat familiar. Had I heard some of these concepts before? The keynotes from the most recent PASS...(read more)

Rick Review: Day 3 Keynote of the 2008 PASS Community Summit

2012-02-09T19:04:00Z

Am I stuck in the past? Not really, but I like to blog about the recordings that I have recently watched. There are a lot of recordings out there on the PASS website and other places. Recently I have had the good fortune of exploring some of the neat technology behind the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) in SQL Server 2008 R2. In order to get myself grounded in some of the basics around what PDW was all about, I decided to review the Dr. DeWitt keynote (Day 3) from the 2008 PASS Community Summit. The...(read more)