PASSMN Meeting 2025-12-16 (Virtual Meeting Only)

Important Note: This meeting is online only and will not be held at the Microsoft Technology Center

Agenda:
📅 Tuesday, December 16, 2025 📅
🕜 3:30-4:00 Kickoff / Announcements
🕜 4:00-5:00 SQL Optimization techniques that save thousands of dollars (Shouvik Sharma)
🕜 5:00-5:10 Break
🕜 5:10-6:10 Query Optimization Fundamentals (Ed Pollack)
🕜 6:10-6:15 Closing

Sessions

🕜 4:00 pm
⭐️ SQL Optimization techniques that save thousands of dollars
🙂 Shouvik Sharma
Cloud data platforms charge based on compute and storage, and inefficient SQL can lead to astronomical costs. In this session, we’ll uncover real-world SQL optimization techniques that have saved organizations tens of thousands of dollars annually. You’ll walk away with practical methods to streamline queries, reduce warehouse load, and build cost-aware data pipelines—without sacrificing performance or reliability.
Whether you're a data engineer, analyst, or platform owner, this talk will help you move from reactive cost monitoring to proactive savings.

🕜 5:10 pm
⭐️ Query Optimization Fundamentals
🙂 Ed Pollack
Performance optimization never goes away. Despite improvements in the query optimizer, data tools, and in AI, the fundamental need to troubleshoot poorly performing queries does not go away.
This is a hands-on session with a step-by-step fundamental guide to query optimization that follows a sequence of events that begins with identifying a performance problem and ends with a solution.

Speakers

🙂 Speaker 1
⚡️ SQL Optimization techniques that save thousands of dollars
Shouvik Sharma is a Data Engineer at Chime, where he builds scalable data platforms that support financial inclusion. With over 7 years of experience across fintech and analytics, he specializes in optimizing cloud data pipelines and SQL performance at scale. He is certified in Snowflake and Databricks and holds dual master’s degrees in data science and Statistics. Shouvik is passionate about reducing cloud data costs through smart, efficient engineering practices.

🙂 Speaker 2
⚡️ Query Optimization Fundamentals
Ed Pollack is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP with a passion for learning how Data Platforms work and sharing that knowledge with the community. His experiences in data architecture, database design, performance optimization, and data security are motivation for public speaking, writing, coding, and other community activities.

Ed has spoken at SQL Saturday events, SQL Bits, PASS Summit, EightKB, and many other regional and international events. Ed is the organizer of the Capital Area SQL Server Group and SQL Saturday Albany, as well as a co-organizer of SQL Saturday New York City, and Future Data Driven.

He has published a number of books, including "Dynamic SQL: Applications, Performance, and Security in Microsoft SQL Server", "Expert Performance Indexing in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2022", and "Analytics Optimization with Columnstore Indexes in Microsoft SQL Server: Optimizing OLAP Workloads". Ed is also an active contributor of content to SimpleTalk.

In his free time, Ed enjoys video games, traveling, cooking exceptionally spicy foods, and hanging out with his amazing wife and sons.