24 Hours of SQL Server 2008

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration:  90 Minutes

SQL Server 2008 includes many new features that Contoso can use to manage the enterprise data warehouse. This session will cover the following topics: minimal logging for inserts, managing partitions, online index management, resource governor, and backup compression.

Presenter: Bryan Von Axelson, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration:  90 Minutes

Unless you have never deployed Microsoft SQL Server, sooner or later you may look at upgrading to a new version. Contoso would like to move their existing SQL Server databases to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and, at the same time, take advantage of the latest improvements in Business Intelligence (BI). In this session, we look at the methods that Contoso used to upgrade.

Presenter: Chris Avis, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration:  90 Minutes

An area of concern for Contoso is the monitoring and troubleshooting of any performance issues it may encounter on Microsoft SQL Server 2008. In this session, we cover the tools available for IT departments as they troubleshoot performance. We look at Performance Studio, the features available, and how to use them to analyze performance. We also cover how to use the Best Practice Analyzer for SQL Server, and utilizing the results it provides.

Presenter: Bryan Von Axelson, Partner Solutions Advisor, Microsoft Corporation

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration:  90 Minutes

Contoso, like most firms, found that once one database is deployed, others soon follow. Unless planned, these deployments can scale out of control. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers a number of features that provide solutions for Contoso to scale out and up, while maintaining control. In this webcast, we show you how to take advantage of the latest hardware, such as 64-bit, hot add memory, and CPU, as well as software features. Learn to speed up query processing with Partitioned Table Parallelism through backup and compression, and to speed up backup times and replication.

Presenter: Chris Avis, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration:  90 Minutes
DateMonday, May 19, 2008 11:30 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

To support high-performing ad hoc analysis, Contoso wants to develop an Analysis Services database. This session will review the new features in Analysis Services that will help Contoso accelerate development and achieve optimal performance: cube and dimension wizards, best practices warnings, attribute relationships designer, aggregation designer, and block computations.

Presenter: John Weston, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

Audience:  IT Professionals
Duration: 90 Minutes
Date:  Wednesday, May 21, 2008 11:30 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Contoso also wants to implement data mining to help the sales department better understand its customer base and forecast future sales based on historical trends. This session will review the data mining capabilities of the Microsoft business intelligence platform: Data Mining Add-ins For Excel, partitioning data for training and testing, filtering mining model data, drillthrough, testing mining model accuracy, and the revised Time Series algorithm.

Presenter: Donald Farmer, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation and Lynn Langit, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation