Please register at http://bit.ly/9wOSd

6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking

6:30 – 6:40 Announcements

6:40 – 6:50 Paul S. Waters: Upcoming Local and PASS SQL Events

6:50 – 8:15 Scott Currie: Better with BI: How to use the best of large application development practices more effectively with Business Intelligence

8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways (maybe, short on them)

Better with BI: How to use the best of large application development practices more effectively with Business Intelligence
 
Talk Summary
In the past two decades, there have been substantial advances in application developer tools, team development processes, application lifecycle management, and a variety of software development models (including agile and SDLC).  While there has been some adoption in the business intelligence community, the current state of BI tools and frameworks present a variety of stumbling blocks to fully leveraging these advances.  As one concrete example, the use of SSIS (DTSX) packages and SSAS (CUBE/DIM) definitions with source control systems is highly problematic.  However, you can adopt many of the best practices and adapt others to work even more effectively for business intelligence than they do for application development. 
 
In this talk, Scott Currie will discuss some of the practical things that you can do today with examples from real world deployments at Fortune 100 companies.  Scott will also discuss the future and how to best prepare your projects for upcoming changes.
 
Biography
Scott Currie is the founder and CEO of Varigence, Inc., which offers a comprehensive collection of tools and frameworks for the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform.  By leveraging the latest technologies from application development and programming language compilers, Varigence revolutionizes the way enterprises build, manage, and use Business Intelligence across their entire organizations.
 
Prior to founding Varigence, Scott worked for 7 years at the Microsoft Corporation.  Scott was the Program Manager for managed interoperability in the Visual C++ Compiler and the 64-bit Just In Time (JIT) compiler for the .NET Framework.  He also lead several important customer connection initiatives for the Developer Division at Microsoft including product feedback, product preview (CTP) and early adopter (TAP) programs, online crash analysis, and customer satisfaction measurements.  Scott later created and served as the Product Unit Manager for the Detego team at Microsoft, which was responsible for leveraging agile application development methodologies in the development of Business Intelligence solutions.
 
Scott graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with undergraduate majors in economics, mathematics, and computer science and a master's degree in computer science.

 Please register at http://bit.ly/c64mv

6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking sponsored by TEKSystems

6:30 – 6:40 Announcements

6:40 – 7:50 Paul S. Waters: Upcoming Local and PASS SQL Events

7:50 – 8:15 Chris Eargle: Exposing your SQL Data with REST

8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways

Exposing your SQL Data with REST

REST is an architectural style that allows for a layered, scalable, and cacheable enterprise information system. With ADO.NET Data Services, a database can be surfaced to a service as a REST-style resource collection that is addressable with natural URIs and can be interacted with using the usual HTTP verbs: GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. This session will describe RESTful Data, the benefits it conveys, and its uses. Then we will set up a data service using an existing database that developers would then access rather than accessing the database directly.

About Chris Eargle

Chris Eargle is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional - Visual C# (C# MVP) and INETA Community Champion from Columbia, SC.  Besides designing and developing software at South Carolina Farm Bureau, he runs the local .NET User Group: the Columbia Enterprise Developers Guild. In his spare time he travels to conferences and user groups to promote best practices and new technologies in the development community.

 Please register at http://ssig200906.eventbrite.com/

This is a different day then our normal date.  We will be back to the first Tuesday of the month for July. 

6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking

6:30 - 6:40 Announcements

6:40 – 7:00 TBD

7:00 – 8:15 Andy Leonard: Database Development as part of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways

Database Development as part of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Based on the popular Example of Test-Driven Development series at SQL Server Central, this session focuses on Database Development as part of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. Examples demonstrate how to test, but the session focuses on the benefits of testing database scripts. T-SQL error trapping, database projects, test artifacts, and source control are also discussed.

About Andy Leonard

Andy Leonard is an Architect and manager with Unisys Corporation, SQL Server Database and Integration Services developer, SQL Server MVP, PASS Regional Mentor (Southeast US), and engineer. He is a co-author of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services , Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers , and MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-441): Designing Database Solutions by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 . Andy founded and manages VSTeamSystemCentral.com and maintains two blogs there: Applied Team System and Applied Business Intelligence . He also blogs for SQLBlog.com . Andy's background includes web application architecture and development, VB, and ASP; SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS); data warehouse development using SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008; and test-driven database development.

6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking

6:30 - 6:40 Announcements

6:40 – 7:00 Ken McClaren : SQL Server Certification

7:00 – 8:15 John Welch : Doing More (ETL) with Less (Effort) by Automating SSIS

8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways

SSIS is a great tool for transferring data from one data source to another, and for implementing complex ETL processes. However, for simple, straightforward data transfer tasks, creating SSIS packages by hand can be time-consuming and repetitious. By attending this session, you'll learn how to automate data transfers from a source to a target using SSIS. You’ll see the steps necessary to create both the control flow and the data flow portions of an SSIS package using the API and C# code. You’ll also learn about altering existing packages programmatically. Specific attention will be given to the generation of data flows with the proper source and destination components. We’ll take a look at some of the open source solutions available for this, plus some “roll your own” options.

Takeaways:

1.       Generating Control Flow Tasks through the API

2.       Generating Data Flow Components through the API

3.       How to Alter Existing Packages Programmatically

John Welch is Chief Architect with Mariner, a consulting firm specializing in enterprise reporting & analytics, data warehousing and performance management solutions. John has been working with business intelligence and data warehousing technologies for 7 years, with a focus on Microsoft products in heterogeneous environments. He is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP), an award given due to his commitment to sharing his knowledge with the IT community.  John is an experienced speaker, having given presentations at Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conferences, the Microsoft Business Intelligence conference, Software Development West (SD West), Software Management Conference (ASM/SM), and others. He has also contributed to two recent books on SQL Server 2008, “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management and Administration” and "Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2008".

John writes a blog on business intelligence topics at http://agilebi.com/cs/blogs/bipartisan. He also writes one focused on SSIS topics at http://agilebi.com/CS/blogs/jwelch/. He is also active in open source projects that help ease the development process for Microsoft BI developers, including BIDS Helper (http://www.codeplex.com/bidshelper), an add-in for Business Intelligence Development Studio that adds commonly needed functionality to the environment. He is also the lead developer on ssisUnit (http://www.codeplex.com/ssisUnit), a unit testing framework for SSIS.

Please register here.
 
If you read the last email you might have notice I had the date for this meeting a month off. Sorry about that.

6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking sponsored by MDI Group
6:30 – 6:40 Announcements
6:40 – 7:50 Ram Garipall :SQL Server Replication
7:50 – 8:15 Russ Jester: The new SSIG web site and NHibernate
8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways
 
Ram Garipall: SQL Server Replication
SQL Server Replication is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between databases to maintain consistency. Using SQL Server replication data can be distributed over local and wide area networks, dial-up connections, wireless connections, and the Internet to different locations and remote or mobile users.
 
The presentation will have few slides and a demo of replication setup between a Server with enterprise edition and a client with SQL Express.
 
Ram Garipalli is a certified Oracle and SQL Server DBA working for TiBA solutions as Senior Database Administrator and Data Analyst. He is working with SQL server for more than 10 years and has experience with Reporting services, Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Replication.
 
Russ Jester:  The making of the new SSIG web site.
Russ will introduce us to our new web site, describe the technologies used and then elaborate on it use of  NHibernate.

 Please register here. 

 6:00 – 6:30 Pizza and Networking Sponsored by FGP

6:30 – 6:40 Announcements

6:40 – 7:00 Ken McClaren :  SQL Server 2008 Activity monitor

7:00 – 8:15 Paul S. Waters: Policy-Based Management

8:15 – 8:30 Closing remarks and give-a-ways

Paul S. Waters: Policy-Based Management

This presentation has a few slides and lots of demos.  We will be covering some of the most useful new features in SQL Server 2008; Policy-Based and multi-server management.  We will cover how to set up policy-based management, and a few use cases.  There are even some nice use cases for application developers.  Much of what will be presented can also be used against SQL Server 2000 and 2005 databases.

 In our last meeting with K. Brian Kelley he mentioned this as being a great new tool to help secure and understand your environment, so I thought this would be a great way to keep the momentum he got going in February going in March.

 Here are the slides and scripts from our meeting with K. Brian Kelley.  For anyone that uses Twitter his id is @kbriankelley.

PowerPoint 97-2003 format

PowerPoint 2007 format

SQL Scripts

Brian, thank you again for comeing up to Greenville to present to our group.  It was an excellent presentation.

Ken, much thanks to you as well.  Your presentaion was not only informative, but also an excellent excample of the 10-20min time slot.

Jason Hall from SQLSentry gave an excellent presentation in the new Resource Governor in SQL Server 2008.

Here in the presentation.

Thank you Jason and Peter.