Events, Webcasts, Conferences and many more in cyber world (SSQA.net)

Overview

Unlike many languages, SQL is a language where you don't explicitly control how the code is executed. With SQL you define intent and then the optimiser builds a query plan based on that. We will look at differing ways in which queries can be written, and how some of these can have disastrous impact on the performance and scalability of your system.

We will extend this knowledge to understand how the optimiser builds a query plan and how parameters and indexes affect the query plan chosen. This will give you the knowledge to know when query plan resuse is good and bad, how to avoid or benefit from parameter sniffing and ultimately write queries that perform better.

Topics

Understanding Resources 

• CPU
• IO
• Memory

• Profiler
• Query Execution plans
• Dynamic Management Views
• Perfmon

• Dynamic search conditions
• Ranking functions
• Windowed aggregates
• Use of cursors
• Scalar functions

Presenters

Simon Sabin is an independent consultant and trainer. He has worked with SQL Server since SQL Server 6.5, on many large scale systems built using the Microsoft architecture. He was awarded the Most Valuable Professional award in 2006 and is a leader in the SQL Server community in the UK. He has written and delivered the developer track of the SQL Server 2008 Jumpstart training for Microsoft alongside Bob Beauchemin. Alongside Allan Mitchell, Darren Green and Tony Rogerson he has setup SQL Know How, a company for providing SQL Server Consultancy and training based on real world experience.

If you want to get the most out of your Analysis Services cube it’s essential to know and understand MDX: you need it to be able to write queries and calculations, and also to be able to use more advanced features such as cell security. This one-day seminar, aimed at those with little or no previous MDX experience, will teach you the basic concepts of the language as well as show you how to write common queries and calculations.  The agenda for the day is as follows:

9:00        Welcome and Introduction

9:30        What is MDX and why do I need it? A session explaining where the MDX language comes from, which products use it, why it’s different from SQL and why you should learn it.

10:00     Fundamental MDX Concepts. This will describe the three most important objects you’ll encounter in MDX: the member, the tuple and the set. Understanding what they are and how to use them is the key to learning MDX

11:00     Break

11:15     Simple MDX Queries. In this section you’ll learn how to write simple MDX SELECT statements, and in the process you’ll gain a better understanding of members, tuples and sets.

12:30     Lunch

13:30     Simple MDX Calculations. This section will show you how to write calculated members in MDX that solve certain basic business problems.

14:30     Useful MDX Functions. Here we’ll discuss a number of useful MDX functions that return sets, members and numeric values, which we’ll need to be able to use when writing calculations.

15:30     Break

15:45     Putting It All Together. In the final session of the day you’ll see how everything we’ve learned can be used to implement 90% of all of the calculations you’ll ever need on a cube. We’ll go into detail on how to tackle certain common MDX calculations, such as ‘previous period growths’ and ‘market shares’.

17:00     Close

Attendees should bring a laptop with Analysis Services 2005 or 2008 and the AdventureWorks Analysis Services database installed, as there will be some practical exercises.
 

The seminar will be taught by Chris Webb of Crossjoin Consulting Limited (http://www.crossjoin.co.uk). Chris is an independent consultant specialising in Analysis Services performance tuning, troubleshooting, design and complex MDX; he’s also  SQL Server MVP, co-author of the book “MDX Solutions” and a well-known Analysis Services blogger (http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/). He has been running MDX training courses for companies worldwide (including Microsoft) for several years.