The final post of my little series of fives for Seattle and PASS Summit finally focuses on the conference itself. This list is for five sessions/events that I think should be on your list to check out this week while at Summit. A couple of these will be difficult to get into, because they will be super-popular. In fact, people have been known to stand in line for the entire previous session in order to get in to one of these presenter’s sessions before. Therefore, like, plan accordingly and stuff.

Dr. Rimma Nehme Keynote

Thursday 8:15 AM
Rimma worked for a while at Microsoft’s Gray Systems lab in a certain midwestern town, with Dr David DeWitt. Back in the day, David–one of the best speakers you’ll ever seen in your life–would give the “tech” keynote at Summit, and everyone would show up to get their brains melted. It was awesome. What’s still awesome is that torch has been passed on to Rimma, and she’s every bit as awesome a speaker as David is. She also got her PhD from Purdue, which makes here more-awesome, obviously. It doesn’t even matter what she’s talking about (it’s here), just go. Thank me later.

Bob Ward: Inside SQL Server 2017 on Linux

Wednesday 3:15 PM
6B
Like the tech keynote, whatever Bob’s talking about at Summit is something to go to if you’re a DBA. This year it is about SQL Server on Linux, one of the most important developments in SQL Server Land in a long time, and definitely one of the most compelling new “features” (obviously not the best word here) in SQL Server 2017. This should be a great presentation for SQL Server DBAs, even if you can barely spell “vi”, and you’ll want to get there early. Bob’s session is where people have stood around for half a day waiting for.

Itzik Ben-Gan: T-SQL Tips and Tricks

Wednesday 10:45 AM
6B
Apparently you should just sit around in 6B all day Wednesday and you’ll have a great day. Itzik is to TSQL as Bob Ward is to the engine, or Rimma is to, well, everything data-related. A “tips and tricks” session may sound ho-hum, but if Itzik is giving it, you’re guaranteed to learn something and get your mind blown by what Itzik will be able to show you with three lines of TSQL. I don’t care how good at TSQL you are, I guarantee you’ll learn something from Itzik in this session.

André Kamman: Azure SQL DW Guidance for ETL Developers

Friday 11:45 AM
6B
Andre gets the “token” BI mention here, and for good reason. Azure SQL DW is a pretty great, scalable, useful service for workloads and data sets that can leverage its enormous capabilities, but along with that capacity and capability come pitfalls to the uninitiated. SQL DW can look like a bit of an odd duck due to its weird load patterns and seemingly missing SQL functions, so content like Andre’s are a definite requirement for ETL architects and developers who are going to be leveraging this service. Even if you don’t utilize it now, learning about the under-the-covers massively parallel processing is useful, I think.

Sunil Agarwal: Maximizing Query Performance with Columnstore Indexes

Wednesday 10:15 AM
615
Alright, so I have a scheduling conflict here. Don’t blame me, I didn’t build the schedule.

Sunil’s going to talk about query performance with Columnstore indexes in SQL Server. Joey and I may-or-may-not have had input into this presentation’s content, so I know it’s going to be good. Kinda like Azure SQL DW, Columnstore Indexes provides some great benefits, but it’s not necessarily something that one can just throw into your existing data model and have your performance go through the roof–there is a little extra work involved to get there. Also, Sunil’s always one of the smartest people in the room, just the type of person I like to listen to talk. I’m thinking I’m not going to be able to make it to this session, unfortunately, although Sunil does have another columnstore session (“Strategies to Speed Up Data Load into Clustered Columnstore Index”) Friday at 11:00 AM.