Baton Rouge .Net, SQL Server & PowerBI User Groups Meeting

Agenda:
• 5:15 - 5:45 - Food and Drinks (Networking)
• 5:45 - 6:00 - Introduction/Announcements
• 6:00 - 7:15 - Presentations
• 7:15 - 8:00 - Open forum for questions

Lightning Talk
Parametrization on the performance and accuracy of Language Models (AIs)
Madelyn Tessier

Main Speaker
Practical Database Optimization for Performance and Cost
Ben DeBow

Most database teams spend 90% of their time fighting fires—chasing down slow queries, responding to CPU spikes, and explaining cost overruns to leadership. But what if you could flip that ratio and spend your time proactively optimizing both performance AND cost?

In this session, we'll move beyond traditional monitoring approaches to explore practical optimization strategies that connect technical performance directly to financial impact. You'll learn how to identify and quantify the "Total Cost of Code"—understanding not just which queries are slow, but which ones are expensive and why that matters to your business.

We'll cover:

The Hidden Cost of Inefficient Workloads: How seemingly minor query inefficiencies compound into significant cloud spend and resource waste

Enterprise KPIs That Matter: Moving beyond basic metrics to measure Performance, Efficiency, and Cost that translate technical health into business language

Practical Optimization Framework: A systematic approach to identify, prioritize, and optimize the workloads that deliver the highest ROI—not just the ones that are easiest to fix

Real-World Case Studies: Actual examples of organizations that reduced database costs by 20-40% while improving performance

Capacity Planning That Works: How to forecast resource needs accurately and avoid the over-provisioning trap that kills budgets

Whether you're managing a handful of instances or hundreds, you'll leave with actionable techniques to transform your database operations from reactive firefighting to proactive optimization. We'll demonstrate how modern workload intelligence tools can surface opportunities you're missing and help you prove the business value of database optimization beyond just "making things faster."

Perfect for DBAs, database engineers, and technical leaders who want to elevate their impact by speaking the language of both performance and financial efficiency.