Triangle SQL Server User Group

Do you have a question about SQL Server or the data platform space? Are you running into technical problems in the office and want a second opinion? Do you have an urge to stump our panel with arcane or weird scenarios--or watch others do just that to us? Then Shop Talk is for you. Shop Talk is a Q&A-driven broadcast featuring Tom Norman, Mala Mahadevan, Tracy Boggiano, and Kevin Feasel. Each week, we will dedicate one hour to answering your questions, including live questions with no prep (and I can't see how that could possibly go wrong!). Send questions to us on the air at https://www.twitch.tv/trianglessug or get them to us early by e-mailing [masked] and give us a fighting chance to come up with the right answer. Prior episodes' show notes are available at https://shoptalk.tripass.org .

** Please note that the starting time for this presentation will be 4 PM EDT instead of 6 PM! A common requirement in database applications is that users want a function to search a set of data from a large set of possible search conditions. The challenge is to implement such searches in a way that is both maintenanble and efficient in terms of performance. This session looks at the two main techniques to implement such searches and highlights their strengths and limitaitons. Erland Sommarskog is an independent consultant based in Stockholm. He has worked with SQL Server since 1991. He was first awarded SQL Server MVP in 2001, and he has been re-awarded every year since. His focus is on systems development with the SQL Server Database Engine and his passion is to help people to write better SQL Server applications.

If you ask 100 SQL Server DBAs what their biggest headaches are, at least 99 of them will say something to do with TempDB. Over the years, there have been many different recommendations about configuration options for TempDB and they have changed over time. The behavior of TempDB has also changed over time. What hasn't changed is the criticality of TempDB and how its proper use and configuration can have major implications in the performance of your application. In this session, we will discuss some of the improvements with TempDB in the latest versions of SQL Server and what good TempDB practices look like today. We will also discuss the improvements that were released in SQL Server 2019 that will unlock scalability of TempDB-heavy workloads now, and into the future.​ Pam Lahoud is a Program Manager in Azure Data, based in Redmond, WA, USA. She has been with Microsoft since 2006 and is currently responsible for Program Management of database engine features for in-market and vNext versions of SQL Server, with a special focus on the Storage Engine and SQL on Azure VM areas. She is passionate about SQL Server performance and has focused on performance tuning and optimization, particularly from the developer perspective, throughout her career. She is a SQL 2008 MCM with over 20 years of experience working with SQL Server.

The Power BI administrator is a very high privilege role which includes a wide breadth of responsibilities. Some administration activities apply consistently for every organization, whereas others depend on how Power BI is being used for self-service and corporate business intelligence initiatives. Each organization's needs related to security, governance, auditing, and data management influence the scope of responsibilities for a Power BI administrator. This session will cover considerations for effectively overseeing a Power BI implementation, as well as suggestions for what to focus on. Melissa Coates is a data architect with a focus on data warehousing, data lake, and business intelligence solutions in the cloud. As the owner of Coates Data Strategies, Melissa offers training and consulting services to help data professionals be successful with enterprise-level Power BI and Azure deployments. Melissa is big supporter of the technical community, and has been a Microsoft Data Platform MVP since 2013.