While I won’t cross post all items, the latest post I wrote up over there about creating a Google Chrome Hosted App is pretty “techie” – so Here is the link

http://stevenovoselac.com/blog/creating-a-google-chrome-hosted-app

I may at some point figure out how to merge or cross post better when needed.

On Friday I attended three sessions. The last two of the day, the second to last one I was on the phone and missed the beginning and then decided to check out all the other things before they were done, and the last session slot, there wasn’t much appealing, and most everyone already left, so I skipped it.

1. CLD-303-A SQLCAT: What are The Largest Azure Projects in the World?

This was given by Kevin Cox and a another SQLCAT member. The SQLCAT team is crazy smart. If you can talk to any of them, you need to. Any chance you get. This was a good view of customers they have dealt with that are pushing SQL Azure to the limits. Since we are running a project now that we are going to be pushing SQL Azure (and Azure) hard, I thought this was good.

So customers have 20TB dbs, 10k databases, so it for sure can scale. Also some good tips/tricks on what you can do to use SQL Azure to the max like the other customers

2. BIA-203: Real-Time Data Warehouse and Reporting Solutions

I wasn’t sure on this one. Carlos Bossy gave a couple of presentations, and he seemed to know what he was presenting, but a topic like this is so situational it is tough to make it generic. Also, there isn’t a “huge” need for real time and I think I wouldn’t implement it the way he was saying anyways. Run SSIS 24/7 with a for loop that never ends? That is crazy. I’d rather pump data through something like StreamInsight with some code than that SSIS solution. Or run things every couple of minutes or something. “near real time”. Also his solutions was using replication which is fragile.

3. BIA-402-M: Optimizing Your BI Semantic Model for Performance and Scale.

Probably one of the better sessions. Again, Microsoft guys letting it all out here. Akshai Mirchandani and Allan Folting from Microsoft. Basically going *in depth* on how PowerPivot and Tabular does what it does with columnar compression, etc. Where you can look and dig under the hood to find ways to make small changes and optimize processing or querying depending on your need. This is a session I want my entire BI team to watch together.

Overall Takeaways Technically:

Azure, Hadoop, Tabular, Power View, BI, DAX, Excel. You can see a pattern here. I am sure there were good “DBA” and DB Dev sessions but I didn’t go to any. BI is taking shape with Microsoft’s strategy and it is all tabular/excel azure/hadoop stuff. Exciting times.

Overall Thoughts of This Year’s Summit and SQL PASS

Guidebook – was ok. I thought it could have been better. I have used before at conferences. Why no native Windows Phone app?

New Layout - the last two years I was at the summit, things were laid out (as far as where things were) pretty much the same. This year it was changed up. Took a day to get the “lay of the land”

Keynotes – kind of the same as usual. I mentioned in by part 2 blog about how the blogger/twitter table needs to grow up, just want to say that again here. First day there was some drama, second day more drama and badmouthing/infighting. Just needs to stop. Leave the drama at home.

Seattle – Seattle is great. Not going to Seattle next year since the summit is in Charlotte, is going to be tough. I know where to go in Seattle and I like the area. I am worried out Charlotte.

Reg Dates – as I mentioned in my day 1 review, many people came out a day early since the dates said 6th-9th. Same thing next year. Should really say 7th-9th.

Hash Tags – on twitter, usually the hash tag is #sqlpass .. this year they said use #summit12 , some people were using #summit2012 and confused. Also, using #summit12 wasn’t looked at by as many people which stinks as I used that on all my tweets. Next year they need to just keep it as one hash tag.

Karaoke – I have been to the unsanctioned one. It was great. Not sure sanctioning karaoke like this year makes sense. It loses some of what made it cool to begin with. I could get into a lot of detail here but I hope people understand what I mean… taking something “underground” and trying to make it mainstream, usually doesn’t work as well.

#sqlfamily – this is something that I have many thoughts on. I will say things but I don’t think many want to hear it. “sqlfamily” isn’t as big of a family as those in the echo chamber think it is. I would say 99% come to the summit and have no real idea of what it even means. 1% that tweet, present, schmooze think everyone else feels and interacts the same way they do, and it just isn’t true. I met many people at breakfast/lunch and after hours that in fact have no real want/need to be totally ingrained with the clique. Many don’t even use twitter, etc. They are just going to work, doing their job, trying to learn. etc. I think it would make sense fo the sql/sql pass community to step back and think about that for a while.

This year I wrote a blog post for the SQL Server Blog before the summit to drive excitement, which was cool. The first day at the keynote a guy sat next to me and we were talking before it started. He was like “dude, I read your blog on the sql server blog!” – To me that was so cool. He said I was a “rockstar”. No, I am not a rockstar (or an MVP – but the blog says I am, maybe the emails have been going to my spam folder all these years) – I am just a regular tech guy that is passionate about technology, SQL, BI (and a ton more). I was really happy though to see that people are reading that content and it is firing them up, it is what my intention was. And if you read that post, I took back a ton of good stuff from the summit. I am already starting to formalize and get strategy/implementation plans going for things I directly learned.

So to close, my third summit was great. Great content, meeting new people and seeing old faces and having lively discussions and knowledge sharing during the day and over a beer. I am going to miss Seattle next year but I can’t wait for the next summit, and possibly even the new SQL BA (Business Analytics) conference in April 2013. I hope everyone who went to the Summit this year enjoyed it and learned as much as I did!

The “keynote” here was some PASS discussions, then Quentin Clark (MSFT exec) and Julie Strauss (wicked smart) doing an end to end demo on many things.. Hadoop, Azure, Data Explorer, Power View, Excel, etc. The blogger table was pretty annoying with their tweets during the demo calling it out as boring and not what DBA’s want, failing to remember that half the conference is BI people. I think the demo was “dry” but they showed many things and tied it together. I saw Julie at TechEd and she knows what she is doing. Of course every year the blogger table is going to say “zoom” on the presentations, which yes, they should be doing, or changing resolution, but to see the bantering back and forth on twitter is just bad overall for the people attending and watching and looking for info. The blogger/twitter table should be relaying information that people at home are clamoring for, not bad mouthing the presentation/presenters.

I hit up 4 sessions in all on Thursday Nov 8th..

1. BID-307-M: Using Power View with Multidimensional Models

As with day one, I mentioned I try to get to presentations by Microsoft employees, today was no different. The first one being with Bob Meyers and Sivakumar Harinath. This was a deep dive into the newly announced functionality yet to be released or given a date that will let us hit OLAP cubes with Power View. Honestly I wish Microsoft would have released this from the get go. One thing I don’t understand though is why Power View uses DAX to hit OLAP and TABULAR, while Excel uses MDX to hit OLAP and TABULAR. Seems split brained to me. Choose one and go. Many audience questions in this one, and one downfall of Microsoft Employee presentations is that they have a hard time saying “no” and get into discussions with audience members, many times taking too much time on some specific question.

Presentation was good, and we learned some things. New dimension properties for ImageUrl, Geography (for mapping), etc. And what will and won’t work with Power View and OLAP. Good stuff.

2. BIA-400-HD: Enterprise Data Mining with SQL Server

This was a double session, and I just stayed for the first half. Mark Tabladillo (marktab) is a PhD so that tells you something. Data Mining in SSAS/SQL Server has always been an enigma since day one. I don’t know of many using it in real life (besides the AdventureWorks Demo?) – it is kind of SSAS Cube Writeback, awesome, but not widely used. He showed how you can use the SSAS Data Mining cubes and Excel Add in to do forecasting, basket analysis and how to get into some of the options and get data out yourself to make your own visualizations, pretty cool stuff, but like I said, I left half way through…

3. BIA-309-M: Enriching Your BI Semantic Tabular Models with DAX

I left the Data Mining session early to get a good seat for this presentation. Kasper de Jonge from Microsoft is one I always try to get to as he is wicked smart as well, and usually the presentations are awesome, this one was no different. Getting into the details with DAX and just seeing someone like Kasper use PowerPivot, Excel .. it shows how “he” would use it, being a program manager, which is different than most. Great to pick up tips/tricks and just see how he goes about doing even the basics. He even showed off the trick on changing the DAX on an imported table to a DAX query to get whatever you want back from your tabular cube, he has a blog post that I went through a while ago to the same effect, which was cool.

4. BIA-206-M: BI Power Hour

Finally to end the day..Matt Masson and Matthew Roche again, with Patrick LeBlanc, Peter Myers, Sean Boon and Chuck Heinzelman.

This presentation reminded me of a Brian Knight spectacular.. throwing trinkets, books, etc to audience, goofy stuff. Pretty funny, and they go through SharePoint, SSIS, PowerView etc. Very lighthearted and a good way to end a 2nd day on non-stop technical things. Matt Masson is probably a stand up comedian at night, just funny stuff. I have seen Chuck present before and he is good, Sean showed us some PowerPivot with Olympic data and Shark bite data, Patrick with a Windows Phone app and Azure and SQL Data Sync, Matt with SSIS data app, and Peter Myers filled in at the end by capturing data from the audience over mobile and slicing/dicing it. I have seen Peter before as well and he is very methodical, it was his first “power hour” and it showed, but hopefully he does it again and is a bit more prepared.

Thursday night was the appreciation night, and gather at the EMP (music museum) in Seattle. They shuttle you over and back. Two free drinks, food (I think I had mac and cheese 3 nights in a row for some reason last week), and you can tour around the museum. There was #SQLKaraoke, but the sanctioned one, not the one at Busch Gardens. Live band and you get to sing, pretty cool stage and everything. Again, bummer, my voice was out or I would have sang a tune.

So to wrap up my 2nd full day, BI, BI, BI all day. More to come with the last day and overall thoughts for this year.

Day one was Wednesday Nov 7th. There is a kickoff thing the night before which is always good to see everyone again, etc. There are pre-cons two days before (5th, 6th). Myself, as with many I talked to, came out the 5th, thinking the conference started the 6th, which we were mistaken, so it was kind of a free day, but still things going on. The website said 6th-9th so we all assumed without digging into the detail. At least I wasn’t the only one.

The first day keynote was good, Ted Kummert from Microsoft which I have seen a few times now, and the same cast of characters, Amir Netz showing off more Power View and Movie data. The big things announced that made me perk up were SQL Server 2012 SP1 and Power View over OLAP (coming soon?). No big flashy giveaways like BUILD, but good keynote, then the fun starts.

I attended 4 sessions on Wednesday

1. BIA-303: What’s New in Analysis Services 2012? – Chris Webb

This was my first session of the day, and it was in 305-TCC. TCC was across the street, which maybe was like that years past, but I never had to go to any, so everyone seemed lost. We finally got there, but then Chris Webb told us that the abstract was wrong in some places and the talk would mostly be about tabular, not multidimensional. Oh well, good stuff anyways. There was one slide about OLAP stuff. The biggest thing I got out of this was xEvents for SSAS, and how to pull into PowerPivot. This is the first time I have seen Chris Webb present and it was good.

2. BIA-316-M: Enterprise Information Management: Bringing Together SSIS, DQS, and MDS

For the second session, it was two Microsoft employees. I like to try to hit many sessions by Microsoft Employees because well, they usually have worked on the products, and they get into details, and they sometimes let some juicy details slip.

Matt Masson and Matthew Roche are great presenters, funny and play off each other. They showed and telled SQL Server 2012 MDS and DQS and discussed how it could and should be used in orgs. Master Data is a huge issue in many businesses and the Microsoft solution looks really good. Using DQS along with SSIS to clean your data, or as a very smart “spell checker”, and then MDS to track changes, workflow, and send back data to source systems if you’d like. The big thing here I took out was how they see MDS fitting into businesses, and that a BI team should implement MDS/DQS to make sure their dimensional data is clean and the “golden master” they need for great BI reporting, and updating back to source systems is a secondary thing.

3. BID-212-S: Around the World with SharePoint BI Toolbelt

This was a typical Brian Knight session. Not as huge of a production as some of them I have seen. Just him and his employee/bi architect and a helper/demo person.

They showed quickly how to get SharePoint setup for Excel Services and Power View and then did some demos. Overall good stuff but seemed a bit rushed and some things didn’t work. They demo’d PerformancePoint, which who knows what future that has, but seems like the best tool for OLAP scorecards in SharePoint. Performance Point has been an enigma for us to do anything with, not sure we ever will. I always see it demo’d and see the benefits, and see what it can do, but we never get around to doing it. Maybe someday, or maybe it will just get replaced by something..

As I said he brings up a sales person from his team or someone new to show how easy it is for a non-techie to use Power View (or whatever tool they present) and go through a little demo.

4. BID-102: Mobile Business Intelligence for Everyone, Now!

Final presentation of the day was with Jen Stirrup, who also won the PASSion award on Thursday. I also chatted with her briefly Wednesday morning, which was good as I haven’t met her before this summit. The presentation was OK. It was a 100 level, but I wanted to see some Mobile BI. I have some high expectations as I saw Jen Underwood present on Mobile BI at TechEd, so was expecting more of the same. Jen Underwood was actually in the audience and answered some audience questions.

The presentation had some technical glitches, and also dug a little to deep into visualization discussion, which is good, but I wasn’t expecting it in this one, maybe a different session. Jen showed some stuff on her iPad, and talked about how she uses Azure and SSRS in Azure, and also HostedPowerPivot, which was good stuff, but nothing new that I didn’t see at TechEd.

I use MobiSSRS for SSRS reports on iOS and that works great, she didn’t mention it, but Mobile BI presentations can get into the “3rd party app here and there” instead of what you can do out of the box. With mobile BI though, the first question is, “do you run SharePoint?” and the second is, “It is Enterprise?” because that makes a big difference in what you might try to do

Wednesday was a good day, I didn’t do much in the evening besides just grab a bite to eat and hit the hay. Bummer this year was that I started getting a cold on the way out on the plane, and it ate at my voice all week. Nothing to serious but enough to not want to talk in a pub about BI much as you have to yell.

More to come about Day 2 and Day 3, and overall thoughts..

Now, if you have ever been to a tech conference, first off the wifi and network in the hotels are slow because you have thousands of geeks doing the same thing. 3g/4g slow too, so you are already hampered by that fact.

Next, you are up early, to breakfast/conference sessions all day, usually till 6:30 pm, and you then have conference events every night till 9, 10, 11 whatever, so you aren’t in your hotel much, maybe to sleep, shower, drop your bag off.

I found that I could “get by” without my laptop, but there were things that weren’t easy, and things I couldn’t do easily when I wanted to.

First trial was an email sent to me with a PDF that asked “can you sign this and get it back today”. Ok, let’s see. Download a PDF signing app and do it in iOS. Works. Little hokey to get the file back and copied and back in the email, but works.

Then, a couple of days later, “go here and fill this web form out”.. well, let’s cross our fingers it works in mobile safari or chrome without issue. It was clunky but worked.

I would say the biggest gripe though I had was this: lack of keyboard. Now I know with iPad (and things like Surface with the touch cover) you can get a keyboard, but I don’t have one of those cases for my iPad so I was just winging it with the iPad.

With no keyboard, it is *very* hard to sit down and bang out paragraphs at any fast type of rate. Blog post? Not quickly. It is just a slow down without a physical keyboard to type on. Other things like emails, twitter, web, whatever, work fine with just the iPad. And of course consuming/reading content is great. Just that typing something like this post here, I waited till I was at my desktop at home to write it. I think I would pull my hair out just trying to use the soft keyboard on the iPad.

Overall it got me by like I said, but there are still some gaps, at least for me, in what I need to do that can’t be handled without a laptop or physical keyboard. Maybe next year :)

Yes, some things don’t exactly parallel to software development, but many things do. Sprints, Standups, estimations, stories, points, scrum master, releasing/delivering value on your iterations. And now even more with process like unit testing of SQL code and more, things are getting closer to software development in that regard.

I have an entire blog category dedicated to agile – more concepts but also talking about Business Intelligence teams in some of them.

Just remember, you can do BI and Agile, it works, and you can deliver a ton of value to the organization. Someone who might argue with you, well, they don’t know what they are doing in BI or in Agile, or the organization isn’t willing to change, which of course then it wouldn’t work.

Advice. Make sure you hold retrospectives, and make sure you make adjustments from whatever comes out of them.

The second was on Power View. I am a bit behind on posting on it :)

With Excel 2013 now RTM’d and available in about a month from MSDN/Technet, this stuff is more “real” than ever. Leonard Murphy does a great job demoing the features and showing some of the capabilities. Enjoy

With Google+ Hangouts, you can have up to 9 people join, share screen, etc, etc. Also dial in phones. There is also an “On Air” option that lets your broadcast to anyone, and will stream and save the hangout to YouTube, pretty cool idea.

Last week we did a 1 hour discussion on “Mobile BI”, which we did as private hangout. This week, I decided to try an “On Air” hangout. It started well, but after about 20 minutes, things started getting shaky with the tech and things froze, cut out, crashed, etc. Not sure if it was the network or my machine, or both, or something else but anyways, we will try it again in 2 weeks and see how it goes.

At the end of it all, this is what I felt like:

Things will hopefully improve…

I would share the YouTube of the hangout, but it was so chopped up part way through and the entire demo portion wasn’t recorded, so for now will have to settle for sharing the slides.

More to come, but definitely a work in progress.