For this year's PASS conference, the SQLCAT team will have 15 sessions providing indepth technical learnings and best practices from some of the largest real-world SQL implementations.  Check out our session list below and Register Now for PASS Community Summit 2008!

SQLCAT - Collecting Analysis Services Performance Data by using Management Data Warehouse, SQL Profiler, and AS DMVs in SSAS 2008
Carl Rabeler (Microsoft Corp.)

In this session, you will learn how to collect Analysis Services query and processing performance data through the use of custom reports that query system performance counters, Analysis Services profiler trace information and Analysis Services Dynamic Management View (DMV) data collected in Management Data Warehouse (MDW). You will learn how the SQL CAT team has extended Management Data Warehouse through the use of custom data collectors and reports. In this session, we will demonstrate how the SQL CAT Best Practices team uses MDW for performance testing and analysis of test runs during stress and configuration testing of Analysis Services.
 

SQLCAT - Pan-STARRS: Building a 100TB+ Scientific VLDBs with SQL Server 2008
Michael Thomassy (Microsoft Corp.)
Maria A. Nieto-Santisteban (Johns Hopkins University)

This session will describe the Pan-STARRS architecture for designing a very large, 100TB+, scientific database implemented with SQL Server 2008. While the primary goal of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, Pan-STARRS, is to detect and characterize near-Earth objects that might threaten our planet, the collected data will contain relevant information for other interesting scientific projects such as the discovery of extra-solar planets, supernovae and Universe evolution, among many others. After telescope images are processed, catalogs with hundreds of billions of individual detections are generated. These astronomical numbers pose a special architectural challenge not only to load, organize, and query the database but also regarding fault-tolerance and recovery. The session will focus on how Pan-STARRS is taking advantage of key SQL Server 2008 features that make this challenge feasible.
 

SQLCAT - Data Compression & Backup Compression Lessons Learnered from Customer Deployments
Sanjay Mishra (Microsoft Corp.)

In this session you will learn how various customers are using backup compression and data compression SQL Server 2008. What are the considerations for performance and resource utilization. What are the strategies for implementing these technologies.
 

SQLCAT - Overall Lessons Learned from SS2008 Experiences
Mark Souza (Microsoft Corporation)

We have worked with more than 100 customers who have deployed SQL Server 2008. Like any new release there are some interesting surprises on the experience both good and not as good. This session will cover the overall implementation of SQL Server 2008 experiences across the box.
 

SQLCAT - Performance Troubleshooting for AS (SS2005, SS2008)
Richard Tkachuk (Microsoft Corp.)
Thomas Kejser (Microsoft Corp.)

Learn from the experiences of the SQL Server Customer Advisory team how they diagnose and troubleshoot query performance issues. We've had experiences with large and small cubes and complex and simple calculations. In this session, we'll discuss how different types of issues manifest themselves differently and how they can often be resolved with a number of different techniques from best practices in partitioning, aggregation design, MDX optimizations and others.
 

SQLCAT - Building SSRS SS2008 Large Scale Solutions
Denny Lee (Microsoft Corp.)
Lukasz Pawlowski (Microsoft Corp.)

In this breakout session, you will learn about successful configuration and architecture principles to maximize the scalability of your enterprise Reporting Services environment. Based on real customer scenarios, we will provide you the details on how to make the most of your SSRS 2008 environment
 

SQLCAT - Security (Auditing, Encryption) -- Data Security, Admin Security
Il-Sung Lee (Microsoft Corp.)
Denny Lee (Microsoft Corp.)
Ayad Shammout (Caregroup Healthcare System)

We will describe how new security features in SQL Server 2008 will work and how these features complement already existing features. In the focus of this presentation we will look at Transparent Data Encryption and how it complemnts Data Encryption introduced in SQL server 2005. We also will look at a new feature SQL Audit and how it can be used and where the limitations are.
 

SQLCAT - Building High Performance systems for SQL Server relational (SS2005/2008)
Juergen Thomas (Microsoft Corp.)

This session will go through different server hardware components like processor, storage, memory, network interfaces and related Windows and SQL server functionality to explain what a balanced system design means and how this design approach is needed for high-end systems. new technologies like latest 6-Core processors and SSD storage and its performance characteristics will be presented
 

SQLCAT - Building HA SQL Server (SS2005/2008) Deployments Solutions Using LL from Cust Deployments
Prem Mehra (Microsoft Corp.)
Sanjay Mishra (Microsoft Corp.)

This session is for you if you want to learn techniques some customers have used to minimize downtime while migrating from SQL Server 2005 to 2008. If you use SQL Server 2005 failover clustering and want to learn about upgrading to Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, this is the session for you. If you are new to SQL Server environment, you will learn how some customers are using various technologies together to achieve high HA and minimize data loss in the event of a disaster. This session is about learning from other customers' deployment experiences.
 

SQLCAT - World Record ETL and ELT (SS2005/2008)
Thomas Kejser (Microsoft Corp.)

This will describe how how the 1TB in 30 minutes load was achieved and summarize the lessons learned from it. During the session you will learn about Important design patterns for creating and troubleshooting scalable Integration Service solutions. We will also cover package baselining and resource requirements
 

SQLCAT - Performance Troubleshooting - MDW / Xevents / etc (2008)
Kevin Cox (Microsoft Corp.)

Reduce the time it takes you to troubleshoot problems in and around SQL Server with the new tools. Management Data Warehouse and Xevents will be shown.
 

SQLCAT - Service Broker Performance & Scalability Techniques from Real-World Implementations
Michael Thomassy (Microsoft Corp.)

This session will describe 2 real-world service broker customer implementations: 1) data intensive batch processing and 2) scale-out approach. For each customer implementation, the session will detail the architecture and provide benchmark numbers.
 

SQLCAT - SQL Server 2008 Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
Mike Ruthruff (Microsoft Corp.)
Prem Mehra (Microsoft Corp.)
Lindsey Allen (Microsoft Corp.)

Learnings and recommendations of running SQL2008 under Hyper-V environment. In this session we will discuss the following: Consolidation considerations - when to consolidate with multiple SQL instances vs. when to consider Hyper-V. Best practices for running SQL Se+G184rver workloads within Hyper-V Virtual Machines, monitoring Strategies, sample data points related to performance of SQL Server running within Hyper-V Virtual Machines.
 

SQLCAT - SS2008 developer and ISV experiences
Kun Cheng (Microsoft Corp.)

SQL Server 2008 introduced hundreds of new features and improvements. In this session we will share overall experience and lessons learned from ISV partners using some of the most important and popular features/improvements.
 

SQLCAT - Large Scale Relational Data Warehouse Learnings
Stuart Ozer (Microsoft Corp.)

A central priority for SQL Server 2008 was to improve support for large scale data warehouse workloads. In this talk we will explore how several customers have successfully exploited Relational Database engine features to build successful, high performance Warehouses larger than 10TB. We will also discuss application design innovations that have been used to achieve continuous data availability, scale-out, and near-real-time data updates in multi-Terabyte settings.