SQLSaturday #476 - Tampa - BI Edition 2015
Event Date: 11/14/2015 00:00:00
Event Location:
- PSCU
- 560 Carillon Parkway
- St Petersburg, Florida
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Sessions
This is a list of sessions from the event, based on the schedule in the XML files.
Title: Tame Your Unruly Data…With Constraints!
Abstract: Never given time or care, never forming good relationships, becoming bloated, corrupt and rife with indistinguishable copies, and all so horrifyingly pervasive in society. But enough about the Kardashians, what about YOUR DATA? If you want to straighten it out and prevent it from going too far in the first place, this session is for you. We will cover constraint basics (not null, check, primary key/unique, foreign keys), provide standard use cases, and address misconceptions about constraint use and performance. We will also look at triggers and application logic and why these are NOT substitutes for (but can effectively complement) good constraint usage. Attendees will enjoy learning how to keep THEIR data off the tabloid page!
Speaker(s):
- Rob Volk
Track and Room: Performance - Dagobah
Title: Calculated Columns, Measures, and KPIs, Oh My!
Abstract: To do serious work in a Power Pivot table or even a SQL Analytics Cube, you must know the difference between calculated columns, measures, and KPIs, how to define them, use them, and display them. This session will take you step by step through the creation of each of these components of a typical pivot table or cube showing you how to define the necessary expressions and then how they are displayed in tables and charts that transform mere data into meaningful managerial information. To keep examples simple enough for all attendees to go back and try on their own, Excel Power Pivot Tables will be used, but the same techniques apply almost without change to SSAS cubes.
Speaker(s):
- Michael Antonovich
Track and Room: SSAS / Analytics - Death Star
Title: Introduction to IoT Analytics
Abstract: This session will provide an overview of ConnectTheDots.io. ConnectTheDots.io is open source framework from Microsoft for getting data from IoT devices to Azure and implementing data analytics easily with Azure analytic services (such as Event Hubs, Stream Analytics and Machine Learning) and PowerBI.
Speaker(s):
- John Wang
Track and Room: SSAS / Analytics - Death Star
Title: Power BI Data Visualizations
Abstract: Many of us over the years have wanted to customize legend colors, axis or title labels in Power BI. Each one of us have thought I really want to use a different type of visualization that is not available in Power BI. This session will help answer these questions and showcase the new out-of-the-box visualizations, changing chart properties and new custom visualizations. Microsoft enables developers thru D3.js, SVG and other graphical technologies to create their own custom visualizations. The new chart types will be able to be published into Power BI so you can leverage any visualization that you want to use from Box chart to sunburst diagrams. This session will showcase the new features and discuss at a high-level what you need to get started creating your own visualizations.
Speaker(s):
- Jason Virtue
Track and Room: Power BI - Dagobah
Title: Roadmap: What’s Coming Next for SQL Server BI and Power BI
Abstract: In case you missed the memo, times have changed in the Microsoft BI world! We are now seeing massive investment in both cloud and on-premises Microsoft BI with rapid weekly releases. In this roadmap session, we will cover the Microsoft BI vision and dive deeper into what is coming next for Microsoft SQL Server BI and Power BI. There are many BI-related enhancements being made across SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, Power BI cloud, Power BI Desktop and many other areas. Join me in this “not-to-miss” session with bleeding edge demos.
Speaker(s):
- Jen Underwood
Track and Room: Power BI - Millennium Falcon
Title: SSIS Programming
Abstract: Assume you have 100’s of packages already developed and running in production. How long it will take to find the package that affect a particular table? Want to automate the search through all packages instead of opening each of them manually and checking them? Can it be more interesting if the conversion of those 2008 packages to 2012/2014 and deploy it to the new SSISDB using project deployment model? You can do it through C# (or VB) code using SSIS SDK with your C# scripting skills that you use in SSIS packages. You can also create new SSIS packages to load text/excel files that receive from a vendor even if you don’t know the file structure. Let’s have some fun..
Speaker(s):
- Jemini Joseph
Track and Room: SSIS / SSRS / Datazen - Cloud City
Title: “Job Searches, Resumes, LinkedIn and Interviews are Fun” -said No One Ever
Abstract: Find out what hiring managers really want to see throughout the hiring process. This session will walk through the basics that every successful candidate should know from soup to nuts: LinkedIn Profile Best Practices, Resume tips, Job search and Interview tips. Yes, of course recruiters, hiring managers and even technical screeners view your LinkedIn page; but, did you realize they also view your twitter account, your blog, your Facebook and that webpage you designed freshman year in college? If you are in a job search, considering one or there is a chance you could ever end up in one (that’s all of you, unless you are retiring today or independently wealthy and just have nothing better to do on Saturdays) then this session will be a great opportunity to find out what “they” are really looking for and acquire a complete guide on how to land that dream job quickly.
Speaker(s):
- Todd Davis
Track and Room: Professional Development - Endor
Title: Know Thyself. The Path to Self-Service BI Success
Abstract: How ready is the business for your self-service BI tools? How ready are your tools for the business? Are you waiting for users to “adopt” your BI capabilities?
In this session, we will discuss finding the self-service sweet spot between data, BI, and business priorities that maximizes analytical value and minimizes development costs and efforts. Different types of users will be discussed and the self-service strategies that can be employed for each. For example, the CEO is likely to want a different view of the data than a product analyst. Let’s talk about when to pivot and when to scatter.
Examples will be shown using Microsoft Power BI.
Instead of waiting for users to adopt, get them to EMBRACE self-service BI tools as a key component of business success.
Speaker(s):
- Edward Kench
Track and Room: Data Quality / Misc - Millennium Falcon
Title: Power BI: End to End
Abstract: Power BI is Microsoft’s powerful new solution platform that allows you to create and distribute visualizations and dashboards for yourself and your organization. In this session we’ll walkthrough how to create reports for dashboards on-prem in Power BI Desktop, deploy your reports and create dashboards in the cloud-powered Power BI service, and even show you how to configure your cloud-based dashboards to access on-prem data sources!
Speaker(s):
- Jorge Segarra
Track and Room: Power BI - Millennium Falcon
Title: Taking the Scare out of Monster Reports
Abstract: So the big wigs have come up with a “master” report that shows everything you could ever want on a single report. It includes grids and charts of varying sizes and complexities. And of course, they want it to be pretty as well.
This session discusses how to use SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to bring it all together while avoiding pitfalls and mistakes. The demonstration shows you how to build a multipage, dashboard-style report to manage your report server, showing a multitude of grids and charts. Discuss the challenges with data reuse and formatting while exploring techniques for getting them to work.
Speaker(s):
- Pam Shaw
Track and Room: SSIS / SSRS / Datazen - Dagobah
Title: The Health Data Initiative: A Quick Start Guide for Entrepreneurs
Abstract: After the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began publishing weather data for free download three decades ago, entrepreneurs across the country began to leverage this easily accessible data to power applications and services that benefit the American people: weather newscasts, mobile applications, insurance, and research. The same pattern of private-sector innovations occurred when Global Positioning System data became openly available in the 1980s.
Now the Health and Human Services Department has made health data free and easily accessible through the Health Data Initiative – making data from HHS’ vaults (from CMS, CDC, FDA and NIH, to name a few sources) available to innovators across the country. In this session, we will explore what data is available, demonstrate how easily the data can be visualized with tools like Tableau or SSRS, and consider the field of opportunities available to improve an industry that is clearly under pressure for data-driven innovation.
Speaker(s):
- Jean-Paul Antona
Track and Room: Professional Development - Death Star
Title: Datazen, Where does it fit?
Abstract: Microsoft has done an amazing job with providing many different tools and options for visually displaying data. From Reporting Services to PowerBI, and everything in between, there are targeted reasons for each of these tools. In the past few years, it has become increasingly important for reporting and dashboarding in the mobile BI realm. Although PowerBI is very mobile friendly, it’s purpose is mainly for end-user analytics.
Enter Datazen. Datazen offers executive level visualization for displaying charts, graphs, KPI’s and interactive timelines across all mobile devices. This presentation is an opportunity to see how simple it can be for IT to get started with the server-side configuration, and allow power users the opportunity to create dashboards for their own audience.
Datazen is available for free download to anyone with a valid enterprise SQL Server 2008 or newer license and Software Assurance, but come SQL Server 2016, it is expected to be an built-in product, and seamle
Speaker(s):
- Allen Ellison
Track and Room: SSIS / SSRS / Datazen - Endor
Title: Looking for the Power BI on-prem alternative?
Abstract: Do you like Power BI – but your company is not ready to move to the CLOUD? In this session we will be covering the On-Prem Power BI alternative that Microsoft has endorsed: Pyramid Analytics BI Office. Do you want to allow your business users to build Tabular models on the fly, or connect to your multi-dimensional cubes - and visualize them immediately? You can do all of this and more with Pyramid Analytics’ BI Office suite. Come and hear about the recent Strategic Alliance between Microsoft and Pyramid Analytics – that brought you the Power BI on-prem alternative.
Speaker(s):
- Mark Scott
Track and Room: Power BI - Millennium Falcon
Title: Azure Machine Learning – Bringing Advanced Analytics to the Masses
Abstract: While Machine Learning is not new, it has never been easy to implement. Azure Machine Learning (AML) aims to provide a set of tools that are easier to use and once a model is created easier to consume by client applications. At the core of AML is ML Studio. ML Studio provides an easy to use graphical tool that allows you to control the process from pre-processing the data, to applying learning algorithms, testing the model, and finally deploying the model for use by client applications. This session guides you through the process of creating and deploying a ML model. In addition it will demonstrate how client applications can easily use the model once it is deployed.
Speaker(s):
- Dan Clark
Track and Room: SSAS / Analytics - Cloud City
Title: Clean Up On Column 3
Abstract: Using Data Quality Services to Clean Up Your Mess It’s happened to all of us. Reach for the jar at the grocery store and…. “Clean up on Aisle 3!”. Well, what happens if the jar you are reaching for is full of data? And it’s bad data? And you got it alllll over the place? This session will deal with techniques for finding bad data, organizing and fixing it, and incorporating the new features of Data Quality Services to help you in your efforts. Several scenarios will be covered.
Speaker(s):
- James McAuliffe
Track and Room: Data Quality / Misc - Endor
Title: Expert Panel QA
Abstract: We will have a panel of experts fielding your questions about Business Intelligence.
Speaker(s):
- Wes Springob
Track and Room: Professional Development - Millennium Falcon
Title: Indexing for performance
Abstract: Learn all you wanted to know about index design, but were afraid to ask. This session focuses on physical index structures as well as how the server chooses indexes. Note: Join optimization is a separate session
Speaker(s):
- Jeffrey Garbus
Track and Room: Performance - Endor
Title: Pyramid Analytics Gold Sponsor Presentation
Abstract: Pyramid Analytics Gold Sponsor Presentation
Speaker(s):
- Wes Springob
Track and Room: Professional Development - Dagobah
Title: Interview Puzzles and how to handle them
Abstract: In today’s world of technology interview, employees have come up with more and more tricks and puzzles to test your brain. How would you move mount fuji? How many basketballs would fit in this room? In this session Mike will cover these questions and many more. You will leanr what not to say and how to handle tough questions.
Speaker(s):
- Mike Davis
Track and Room: Professional Development - Death Star
Title: SQL Standup! - It’s Not a Scrum Team for DBAs
Abstract: Tips, tricks, opinions, and humor from an experienced data services professional.
Speaker(s):
- David Weingarten
Track and Room: Data Quality / Misc - Cloud City
Title: Why I won’t hire you and what you can do about it!
Abstract: As a hiring manager, I see the same mistakes over and over again. In this session we’ll talk about common mistakes in resumes, interviews, social media and how you can avoid them. We’ll also discuss lost opportunities and how not to miss them. This information applies to both internal and external candidates.
Speaker(s):
- Leigh Freijo
Track and Room: Professional Development - Death Star
Title: Dobler Consulting Gold Sponsor Presentation
Abstract: Dobler Consulting Gold Sponsor Presentation
Speaker(s):
- Wes Springob
Track and Room: Professional Development - Death Star
Title: Optimizing your data warehouse for OLAP Processing
Abstract: Analysis Services have become a major part of upper management daily decision making activities. However, with our DW sizes reaching multiple terabytes minimizing time required to process our data has become our top priority. In this session, we will cover the options we have as DBA’s to improve the performance of our DW processing time. We will look at features and general best practices available to us within SSAS as well as enterprise level features within the database engine itself and how aligning them to work side by side would yield us at least 200% improvement in our processing time.
Speaker(s):
- Konstantin Melamud
Track and Room: Performance - Dagobah
Title: Tegile Gold Sponsor Presentation
Abstract: Tegile Gold Sponsor Presentation
Speaker(s):
- Wes Springob
Track and Room: Professional Development - Endor
Title: T-SQL to MDX for Beginners
Abstract: SQL Server Analysis Services has become a key base of Business Intelligence integration into business decision making. As DBA’s sometimes we are forced to change over to new coding standards. MDX is one of the base languages used when reporting off of cubes that are built using the multi-dimensional model. The goal of this class will be to help beginners convert from using T-SQL to understanding the basics when writing MDX codes from scratch.
Speaker(s):
- Dan King
Track and Room: SSAS / Analytics - Cloud City
Speakers
This is a list of speakers from the XML Guidebook records. The details and URLs were valid at the time of the event.
Wes Springob
Twitter: - /SQLWes
LinkedIn: Wes Springob
Contact: http://SQLWes.com
Wes Springob is a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) at Microsoft and speaks regularly on Business Intelligence, Power BI, database and report development.
Dan King
Contact: http://www.rdx.com/Blog/dba_tips/2014/04/the-merge-join-transformation-and-an-ssis-sorting-tip/
My name is Dan King. Believe it or not I am a huge computer geek. I have worked in the System Admin role and for the past 9 years I have worked with RDX holding many positions. My current role is Sr. Manager of Data Analytics. I am a father of one. I love sports and I am a huge outdoors man. I have a few blogs published by my company that can be found on there website.
Jen Underwood
Twitter: - @idigdata
LinkedIn: Jen Underwood
Contact: http://www.jenunderwood.com
Jen Underwood is a Senior Director at DataRobot. Over the past 20 years, Jen has held worldwide product management roles at Microsoft and served as a technical lead for system implementation firms. She has a unique blend of product management and “hands-on” experience in data warehousing, reporting, visualization, and advanced analytics. In addition to keeping a constant pulse on industry trends, she enjoys digging into oceans of data to solve complex problems with machine learning.
Jen has a Bachelor of Business Administration – Marketing, Cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a post-graduate certificate in Computer Science – Data Mining from the University of California, San Diego.
Jean-Paul Antona
LinkedIn: Jean-Paul Antona
Mr. Antona has 17 years of professional software engineering experience involving the integration of large-scale enterprise applications that are combined with his expertise in business intelligence and data visualization techniques to produce applications that streamline business processes and provide management with visual insights for optimizing productivity and data velocity.
Todd Davis
Todd Davis is a Manager at Convergence Consulting Group, an Analytics, BI and DW consultancy. He is responsible for recruiting and hiring some of the industry’s top tier BI Consultants. Todd is a 2003 graduate of the University of Florida where he studied Economics and Management and also began his career in recruiting and managing employees while attending UF. Todd has been instrumental in the placement of more than 1,000 professionals over a thirteen-year career.
Jason Virtue
Jason Virtue, BI Technology Solution Specialist for Microsoft who covers the Greater Southeast District region. Jason has worked in the BI industry for 20 years for management consulting firms and Fortune 500 companies. He has worked as a BI architect and delivered multiple BI platforms across various businesses. His technology and real-world experience helps him advise client on best practices in the data warehouse industry
Wes Springob
Twitter: - /SQLWes
LinkedIn: Wes Springob
Contact: http://SQLWes.com
Wes Springob is a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) at Microsoft and speaks regularly on Business Intelligence, Power BI, database and report development.
Allen Ellison
As a Microsoft Certified Solution Expert (MCSE) for SQL 2012/2014 Business Intelligence, I spend much of my time trying to find new and improved ways to use data. This includes working with many different tools for retrieving, processing and displaying data in various fashions to meet client needs. This has been a passion of mine for about the last 13 years covering the gamut from SQL DBA/Developer to Enterprise Business Intelligence.
Jemini Joseph
LinkedIn: Jemini Joseph
I#39;ve been working in Microsoft BI field since 2003 and worked in SSIS/SSAS/SSRS since 2005. Working as an independent consultant in BI field since 2007 for different clients across the country (US). Most of my experience is in SSIS and worked different versions of SSIS from 2005 to 2014.
Wes Springob
Twitter: - /SQLWes
LinkedIn: Wes Springob
Contact: http://SQLWes.com
Wes Springob is a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) at Microsoft and speaks regularly on Business Intelligence, Power BI, database and report development.
Leigh Freijo
Twitter: - @leighfreijo
LinkedIn: Leigh Freijo
Leigh Freijo is a Manager in Database Administration for Raymond James Financial. Leigh is an experienced SQL Server DBA and the chapter leader of the Pinellas SQL User Group.
Konstantin Melamud
Twitter: - @kmelamud
Konstantin has over 15 years of SQL Server experience and demonstrates his expertise and commitment to helping SQL Server DBAs succeed through his position as Director of Service Delivery at RDX. In his role, Konstantin is responsible for designing and implementing RDX’s service delivery strategies, including those for SQL Server. Since joining RDX in 2009, Konstantin has proven to be a strong leader and expert in SQL Server database administration, architecture, performance tuning, and business intelligence. He is also a very active member of the SQL Server community and frequently presents at SQLSaturdays and user groups throughout the year. In addition, Konstantin presented during 24 Hours of PASS and at the PASS Summits.
Wes Springob
Twitter: - /SQLWes
LinkedIn: Wes Springob
Contact: http://SQLWes.com
Wes Springob is a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) at Microsoft and speaks regularly on Business Intelligence, Power BI, database and report development.
Jorge Segarra
Twitter: - @sqlchicken
LinkedIn: Jorge Segarra
Contact: http://sqlchicken.com
Jorge Segarra is a senior consultant for Microsoft (Premier Support for Developers) and a former SQL Server MVP. Jorge has co-authored titles including “SQL 2008 Pro Policy-Based Management” and “SQL Server 2012 Bible” .
Pam Shaw
Twitter: - @PamShaw
LinkedIn: Pam Shaw
Contact: http://sqlpam.wordpress.com/
Pam Shaw has been in IT for over 30 years. Since 2001, Pam has been working with SQL Server, first 2000, then 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and now 2014. Pam currently works as a BI Developer as an independent contractor. Pam is also the Chapter Leader of the Hillsborough SQL Users Group PASS chapter and organizer of SQLSaturday Tampa.
Mark Scott
Twitter: - @usamjscott
LinkedIn: Mark Scott
Contact: http://www.pyramidanalytics.com/Pages/blog/Authors/mark-scott.aspx
Mark has over 20 years of consulting, managing, delivering, and selling in both private and public companies all over the US. Prior to joining Pyramid, he held consulting and sales leadership positions at Microsoft delivering and selling BI and Data Warehousing solutions to large enterprise accounts. In his spare time - Mark enjoys traveling and spending time with his wife, and two sons age 4 and 6!
Dan Clark
LinkedIn: Dan Clark
Contact: http://drclarkblog.wordpress.com/
Dan Clark is a senior data analytics consultant. He is focused on all things data analytics and training others how to get value from their data. Dan has published several books and numerous articles on .NET programming and data analytics. He is a regular speaker at various developer and database conferences and user group meetings and enjoys interacting with the Microsoft developer and database communities. His latest book Beginning Power BI published by Apress is a will get you up and running with self-service data analytics on the Power BI platform in no time.
David Weingarten
Twitter: - davidbfunny
LinkedIn: David Weingarten
15+ years experience in all facets data service (design, architecture, develoment, administration, BI) 4+ years in comedy, with heavy empthasis on stand-up 0.01% interest in Star Wars - 0.0001% interest in Star Trek - 0.00001% interest in dressing up for a convention Firm believer that Xbox headsets and consentual sex are mutually exclusive
Mike Davis
Twitter: - @mikedavisSQL
LinkedIn: Mike Davis
Contact: http://MikeDavisSQL.com
Mike Davis, MCITP, is a Consulting Team Lead at Pragmatic Works. He is an author with books covering Business Intelligence and SSIS. Mike is an experienced speaker and has presented at many events such as several SQL Server User Groups, Code Camps, SQL Server Launches, SQLSaturday, and SQL Rally. Mike is an active member at his local user group (JSSUG) in Jacksonville, FL.
John Wang
John Wang is a Back-end .NET Developer. Currently, his interests are IoT, big compute, services, cloud computing, Powershell and SQL topics. He is an frequent speaker at the various Code Camp, Meetup, IT Pro Camp and SQLSaturday.
James McAuliffe
LinkedIn: James McAuliffe
James McAuliffe is a Cloud Solution Architect with CCG Analytics, a Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also a Microsoft Preferred Partner Solutions expert and has been worked with clients of all sizes, from local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Today’s mix of Big Data and cloud offerings make yesterday’s dream today’s possibility. Let’s talk about it!
Jeffrey Garbus
LinkedIn: Jeffrey Garbus
Contact: http://mssqlperformance.blogspot.com/
Jeff has been consulting on and performing technical training for MS SQL Server since 1989, Version 4, on OS/2. Since then, he has worked extensively with each release of the product, specializing in performance and tuning, from concept through legacy system, on systems of all sizes, from small start-up company applications to multi-terabyte data warehouses.
In addition to hands-on consulting, he speaks at SQLSaturdays several times/year, has a youtube channel with free training, and has written 20 books on database management systems.
His latest book is “Transact SQL the Definitive Guide.”
Rob Volk
Twitter: - sql_r
LinkedIn: Rob Volk
Contact: http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/robv/
Rob Volk is a SQL Server DBA in the Metro Atlanta area since 2001. He also moderates and answers the forums on SQLTeam.com. While an old-time cranky DBA, he no longer considers quot;business intelligencequot; an oxymoron or quot;the cloudquot; as merely atmospheric moisture, and is delightedly dipping his toes into both of these new oceans, and loves to do things in new and and unusual ways.
Michael Antonovich
Twitter: - @SharePointMikeA
LinkedIn: Michael Antonovich
Contact: http://sharepointmike.wordpress.com
Michael Antonovich is the assistant director of Web and Technology Services in the Communications Division for Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, FL, where he manages the Internet and intranet infrastructure. He has published seven books, ranging from an Apple II User Guide to Office and SharePoint 2010 User’s Guide. His blog has focused mainly on PowerPivot and Power BI, but for the last year Mike has taken a break to pursue some other activities. He hopes to restart his blog later this year focusing more on style and presentation. Mike has used SQL Server since 1998 and, for the past 7 years, has been promoting SSAS, PowerPivot, and Power BI for the masses.
Edward Kench
LinkedIn: Edward Kench
A BI veteran, Edward currently is the BI architect for Bankers Financial Corp in St. Pete. Edward has successfully designed BI solutions across industries (Media amp; Ads, TV, Film, Insurance amp; Finance, Defense, Hospitality), across BI disciplines (Modeling, ETL/ELT, Dashboards, Predictive Analytics, Operational BI, self-service), and across tools and platforms. (MicroStrategy, Cognos, Tableau, SSPS, Power BI, SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase). Ed loves to talk about tech with like-minded folks.
Sponsors
The following is a list of sponsors that helped fund the event: