2005 PASS Community Summit - Day 2
SQL Server 2005 XQuery Primer (Bob Beauchemin)
This was a very good session on the basics of XQuery and how it works. Coming from the legendary Bob with his superb training skills, the session was a breeze to follow and I even learned a few things about XQuery and XML! Basically, the session was about the various methods in XQuery, the FLOWR expression and the DML operations over XML. Overall, a very good session.
SQL Server 2005 Diagnostic Collection and Analysis (Ken Henderson)
This session was in one word: WOW! Coming from Ken (the author of PSSDIAG), this session was an update to the PSSDIAG tool called the SQLDIAG. Ken went on to explain the basic workings of this tool and what it does etc. The cream of the session was his next generation tool for analysis of the various traces that the diagnostic tool captures called SQL Nexus. The tool looks really cool and it will be a boon to many DBAs. With cool analytical capabilities and fantastic drill down charts, this tool promises to be a killer application! Overall, the session was really good.
SQL Server OS Foundational Elements (Bob Dorr)
This was a deep session and to be frank, some of the concepts did not register with me at all! The session was about the SQLOS component in SQL Server 2005 and what are its fundamental elements etc. I cannot remember enough of the session to blog about its contents.
Advanced DDL Tricks (Joe Celko)
I had to attend this one :-) Coming from the gurus of SQL, the session was packed. Joe Celko took us on a tour of some of the basic best practices to follow for database design and it was a good refresher course on the basics. Some of his points were really important and I have seen many a developer and DBA ignore the rules. Overall, the session was really cool and it reminded me that I had to re-read the 2 Celko books that I have!