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Time to read: ~ 4.5 minutes

What’s On?

One quarter of the year is over but we’re still aiming to bring you top quality content from the Data Platform world.

Check out the below information and don’t be afraid to get in touch with us.

We’re still looking for someone to give us a hand! Please contact us at DBAFundamentals@pass.org if you would like to help with managing our group. A dedicated effort to provide the best educational content we can is the primary requirement. You can add anything that you would like to do or have special skills with.

Sessions

If any of these catch your interest then hop onto dbafun.org and sign up to whatever and how ever many you want!

Paul Randal ( blog | twitter )

Index Fragmentation: Internals, Analysis, and Solutions

2018-04-02 11am – 12pm CST

As soon as you have more than one index on a table, you’re going to start seeing fragmentation. Many people know that this fragmentation is bad, but why is it bad? And what is the best way to get rid of it? Come find out from the person who wrote the tools for detecting and removing index fragmentation. In this session, you’ll learn how fragmentation occurs and why the process that leads to it can often be as damaging to performance as the fragmentation itself. You’ll also learn how to test for fragmentation, the different methods of removing it, and everything you need to consider when putting together an appropriate fragmentation-management strategy.

Paul’s an author, consultant, and top-rated speaker having spoken at PASS, TechEd, SQLintersection, and numerous other events around the world. He spent 9 years working on the SQL Server team, writing DBCC CHECKDB, and ultimately responsible for the entire Storage Engine. In 2007 Paul left Microsoft to co-own and run SQLskills.com, and has been a SQL Server MVP ever since. When he’s not tweeting, blogging, or helping someone recover from a disaster, he’s likely to be underwater somewhere in the world with his wife, Kimberly L. Tripp. Full bio at http://www.sqlskills.com/about/paul-s-randal/

Hamish Watson ( blog | twitter )

Test Driven Development in SQL Server – it will make your database deployments better

2018-04-10 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm AEST

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a practice that has for years enabled application developers to write code that is less-buggy. It is extremely relevant for database development, as it ensures that the code produced using TDD will be of higher quality, which means interactions with data and code are safer. In this session we will go through how to setup some simple unit tests using various industry tools such as the open-source framework – tSQLt, the SQL Cop testing utility and Redgate’s SQL Test tool which brings it all together. The advantage of these tools is that we can run them within our familiar SQL Server Management Studio, whereas other testing frameworks rely on the Visual Studio IDE. It will be shown in a comprehensive DEMO how to bring TDD to your database development and result in higher quality deployments to your databases when incorporated into Continuous Integration processes.

(Hamish doesn’t write about himself in the description but you can check out he’s videos for Microsoft’s Channel 9 here – Shane)

Thomas LeBlanc ( blog | twitter )

Execution Plans for Beginners

2018-04-17 11am – 12pm CST

This will be a Beginners session highlighting the starting point for using the execution plans from SQL Server to assist in query tuning. Briefly, we will look at the history to get an idea of how Microsoft has improved the display through Graphical Plans and Missing Index suggestion. The, we will answer questions like the following. What is the difference between a Table and Clustered Index Scan? What is a Lookup? How do you improve performance of Lookups? What are the different types of Loops? How to get more information from the Plan with the properties window?

(another speaker who doesn’t write about himself in the bio, gotta love the humbleness but we want to know about them 🙂 I’m ashamed to say that Thomas was someone I had yet to follow on Twitter and his blog. I’m fixing that mistake now! – Shane)

Other Items

We have 2 codes for you to use as freely and as sharing-ly as you want!

Use one of our codes and be entered in a contest to win an $500.00 Amazon Gift Card to be given away to one lucky person in September!

Check out the details below!

VGSTRM843

PASS Summit 2018 Discount Codes

Streaming

This code will get you streaming access to 2017 PASS summit sessions!

Streaming Code: VGSTRM843

Discount

This code will get you $150.00 off full price of PASS Summit 2018 which is currently $1899.00 .

Discount Code: VGDISM843

You can already register for the PASS Summit 2018 and knowing some of the reactions to last years Summit, I’d bet people already have! Don’t miss out on your place and register now!

Register Now: https://www.pass.org/summit/2018/RegisterNow.aspx

2018 Quarter 1 & 2 Contest

You may have seen Steve mention the contest that we are doing for the first half of 2018. In case you haven’t it’s simple to catch up!

After the last session in June, the 19th to be exact, we are giving away 3 Amazon gift cards ranging from $1,000 down to $500 and $300.

To win it’s simple:

• Be a member of PASS and subscribe to our group: dbafun.org
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel: dbafuntube.org
• Follow us on Twitter: @dbafun
• Then, for every session you attend in the first half of the year, you get an entry into the draw per session

Hope you all have a great April and we’ll be talking to you!