With SQL Server now fully supporting virtualisation, architectural and licensing discussions concerning SQL Server are now common place. However, consistently, the rights and terms of licensing SQL Server in a virtual environment are commonly misunderstood, and worse still, architectural choices are sometimes made based on these incorrect assumptions. Not only that, but both capability and licensing is evolving with the next release SQL Server 2012. In this session we’ll cover virtualization licensing for SQL Server today, plus how that looks in the future with SQL Server 2012. We’ll spend time up on the whiteboard talking through some common scenarios plus sharing best practices from other customers locally.

Venue: Microsoft Brisbane, Level 28/400 George Street
Duration: Catering from 5:30PM for a 6:00PM Start (meetings typically finish at 7:30PM)
On: Thursday, 23rd February 2012
RSVP: to contact@wardyit.com will help with catering

Join Peter Myers as he presents the know-how required to develop and deploy a tabular BI Semantic Model – a new data modelling approach made available to developers in SQL Server 2012.

SQL Server PowerPivot, first released with SQL Server 2008 R2, empowers business users to create their own tabular data models in Excel 2010. In this presentation you will learn how the features of PowerPivot have been enhanced to support the creation of more sophisticated data models, and that these and additional features are available to the developer to create and secure larger scale solutions.

This presentation is targeted at IT professionals with an interest in data analysis and equally for non-IT professionals interested to understand and evaluate the new data modelling capabilities delivered in the upcoming release of Analysis Services. Those with a background in PowerPivot and/or developing Analysis Services Unified Dimensional Models will benefit from a comprehensive overview of the new data modelling capabilities, theory and discussion to understand when each modelling choice is appropriate.

Note: All theory and demonstrations will be based on the latest publicly available version of SQL Server 2012 (formerly Code Name “Denali”) which for Analysis Services is considered to be feature complete.

About the Presenter
Peter Myers has 13 years' solid experience working in OLTP database design and development, DBA support and Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence with SQL Server.

Specializing in Microsoft Business Intelligence, Peter provides mentoring, technical training and course content authoring for SQL Server and Office. Specifically he works with Integration Services, Analysis Services (cubes and data mining), Reporting Services, Excel, PowerPivot and PerformancePoint Services.

He has a broad business background supported by a bachelor degree in applied economics, and he extends this with current MCITP and MCT certifications. He has been an MVP since 2006.

Peter is an established presenter and enjoys sharing his enthusiasm for Microsoft technologies by presenting at user group meetings, technical events and conferences.

Venue: Microsoft Brisbane, Level 28/400 George Street
Duration: Catering from 5:30PM for a 6:00PM Start (meetings typically finish at 7:30PM)
On: Thursday, 15th December 2011
RSVP: to contact@wardyit.com will help with catering

SQL Server 2012 introduces Crescent for data visualization and exploration. Crescent, recently renamed Power View, employs an innovative UX with no context menus and at most two clicks to visualize a change. It’s built on top of a Tabular Analysis Services database instead of the traditional Multidimensional Cube. So without all the great features of the Cube developed over the past 15 years, can it really be a core tool for information workers, or is it just another way for Microsoft to demo SharePoint? To help us decide, we’ll demonstrate how to construct a Tabular database, import the data, and examine how to modify its metadata to support Power View. We’ll take a look at constructing measures and computed columns, and then see how to use Power View to expose and explore the Tabular data in SharePoint. We’ll examine the Power View UI, and show how to use it to quickly build dynamic BI dashboards. We’ll show how to explore data with entrancing features like time animation charts and the visual index cards. By the end of this talk you will be much closer to deciding: BI candy or BI core?

About the Presenter

Russ Blake is the inventor/author of the Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon), and author of the book “Optimizing Windows NT”. Prior to settling in Brisbane, Russ worked at Microsoft for 8 years, and was a Senior Researcher in Microsoft Research. He holds three US patents in software and one Chinese patent, and has written numerous technical articles. Russ consults for Readify Pty Ltd specializing in SQL Architecture and BI solutions.

Venue: Microsoft Brisbane, Level 28/400 George Street
Duration: Catering from 5:30PM for a 6:00PM Start (meetings typically finish at 7:30PM)
On: Thursday, 24th November 2011
RSVP: to contact@wardyit.com will help with catering