SQL PASS Summit 2016–Day 3 and Reflections

Apologies for the delay in getting this blog out to you all. When PASS finished on the Friday we had to rush over to the airport to get our flight back to the UK. When I landed on Saturday I was suffering from jet lag and only now am I in a fit state to blog again.

I got the impression from the schedule that Day 3 of PASS was going to be a wind-down day as very few of the sessions seemed as intense as the previous days’ sessions.

My first session of the day, despite being the last day of PASS, was early. Earlier than any of the keynotes, but worth getting up for – a Chalk Talk with the Data Warehouse Fast Track Team. This also included the Azure Data Warehouse team as well, and the conversation was much more focused on the Azure side of Data Warehousing. Lots of conversations around Polybase and patterns in how to get data from on-prem to cloud using Polybase. In terms of patterns, it was reassuring to learn that the approach Adatis has adopted is spot on. Simon Whiteley is the man to see about that. His blog is here: http://adatis.co.uk/author/simonwhiteley/

On the Fast Track theme, my next session was  exploring the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, which was interesting to know about, especially the various testing that these pre-configured servers go through. At some point next year, Microsoft will be releasing the Fast Track Testing Programme to the community so that everyone will be able to test their hardware to the same exacting standards and know what their maximum throughput / IO demand etc., is in order to properly gauge hardware performance.

After this session I got talking to a few people about data warehousing. The conversation was so engrossing that I missed the session that I was due to attend. Luckily, most of the sessions at PASS are recorded so I will have to chase up that session and others when they get released.

My final session of the day was a Deep Dive of SQL SSIS 2016. It wasn’t so much a deep dive and more a run-down of upcoming features. The one I’m most excited about is the Azure Data Lake Store connector, which will be released once Azure Data Lake goes into General Availability, which I’ve been told is soon…..

Now that I’ve had to week to digest and reflect on SQL PASS Summit, my findings are thus:

SQL PASS Summit is invaluable.

It provides an opportunity to learn so much from so many people, and not just learn from the presenters. There are so many people from all over the SQL community, with different experiences of SQL, different experiences of data, different experiences of life, that you can’t not learn something. PASS provides the easy environment to share ideas among peers and learn new technologies, new ways of working and new tricks.

I’ve already started sharing some of my learning’s with colleagues and I can’t wait to share them with everyone else too!