Frontpage Announcements

xVelocity, DAX in Action and Tabular vs Multidimensional - Slide decks

karim — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:08:00 GMT

Chris Webb and Alberto Ferrari spoke on may 14th about xVelocity, DAX in Action and Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional.

The presentations are now available for download here.

Next SQLUG event with Chris Webb and Alberto Ferrari, May 14th (Brussels)

Steve — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:21:00 GMT

We are very proud to announce Chris Webb and Alberto Ferrari as speakers on the next SQLUG evening event. The two SSAS Maestros will present no less than 3 sessions on xVelocity, DAX in Action and Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional.

Inside xVelocity (VertiPaq)

PowerPivot and BISM Tabular models in Analysis Services share a great columnar-based database engine called xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq). If you want to improve performance and optimise memory used, you have to understand some basic principles about how this engine works, how data is compressed, and how you can design a data model for better optimisation. Prepare yourself to change your mind. xVelocity optimisation techniques might seem counter intuitive and are absolutely different than OLAP and SQL ones!

DAX in Action

What is new in DAX and when it is better/faster than other existing languages? Does it makes the project development faster and cheaper? Discover the answer to these questions by looking at some real-world scenarios that will give you the elements to compare DAX with other languages such as SQL and MDX.

Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional

You have a new project and you have to make an important decision upfront. Should you use Tabular or Multidimensional? It is not easy to answer, because sometime there is a clear choice, but most of the times both decisions might be correct, at least at the beginning. In this session we’ll help you making an informed decision, correctly evaluating pros and cons of each one according to common scenarios, considering both short-term and long-term consequences of your choice.

Alberto Ferrari is a Business Intelligence consultant. Alberto helped several software houses to build complex BI solutions, from the OLTP to the final OLAP cubes, providing planning hints all over the development lifecycle. He is a book author also, having worked on "Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008" with Marco Russo and Chris Webb and Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning with Marco Russo.

Chris Webb is an independent consultant specialising in Analysis Services, MDX, PowerPivot and DAX. He is a co-author of "Expert Cube Development with SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services", and "MDX Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase", and blogs at http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com

Agenda:

18:00 Registration

18:30 Session start

21:00 Session end

Location:

Kohera - The Oak3 Campus

Telecom Gardens

Medialaan 36

1800 Vilvoorde

Brussels, Belgium

April 26th, Free event IT in Transformation: BI and Productivity for Your Business Solutions with Rafal Lukawiecki

Frederik — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:53:00 GMT

On April 26th Rafal Lukawiecki is coming to Belgium for a full day event on Microsoft Business Intelligence.

Today, IT strives for increased business relevance in the ever-changing environment of continuous demands for business growth and transformation, while needing to offer day-to-day mission-critical business systems for its employees. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence, Application and Relationship Management platforms have been undergoing a strategic shift towards employee self-service empowerment. 2012 sees the introduction of some of the most impressive, and powerful technologies, such as Power View.

Not only will he cover the present, but he will also outline the roadmap for the future of the platform, in particular looking at the support for the emerging technologies of Big Data, and its relevance to public and private cloud environments.

As Strategic Consultant at Project Botticelli Ltd (projectbotticelli.com), Rafal Lukawiecki focuses on making advanced analytics easy, insightful, and actionable, helping clients achieve better organisational performance. Passing those skills to consulting companies, development teams, investors, and management boards is important to him. While he specialises in business intelligence and data mining, he is also known for his work in the fields of information security and cryptography, enterprise architecture, and solution delivery. Rafal is a popular speaker at major IT conferences.

Full agenda: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/events/itintransformation/default.aspx#agenda

Free Registration: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032509093&Culture=en-US

Location:Utopolis Mechelen, Spuibeekstraat 5,Mechelen

Live Meeting: Who did what and when on my database? April 19th, 2:00 PM

Steve — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:42:00 GMT

Abstract
With SQL Server Audit, SQL Server 2008 introduced an important new feature that provides a true auditing solution for enterprise customers. SQL Server Audit offers a number of attractive advantages that may help DBAs more easily achieve their goals such as meeting regulatory compliance requirements. SQL Server Audit permits fine-grained auditing whereby an audit can be targeted to specific actions by a principal against a particular object.
This session provides a comprehensive description of this feature along with usage guidance and then provides some practical examples.
We will also highlight the SQL Server Audit Enhancements of SQL 2012.

Speaker: Pieter Vanhove
Pieter is a SQL Server Consultant at Kohera, and has been working with SQL Server since 2000. He has a lot of experience with managing large databases in telecom and finance environments. Pieter has also a profound knowledge in implementing high availability and disaster recovery solutions (Microsoft Failover Clustering, Database Mirroring, Replication).

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032508971

Next Event: ColumnStore Indexes in SQL Server 2012 with Ludo Bernaerts on April, 16th (Brussels)

Steve — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:56:00 GMT

In this session we will focus on a data warehouse redesign to SQL Server 2012 using ColumnStore indexes.
The data warehouse holds a daily load of 100 million records with a three year retention time.

About the speaker

Ludo Bernaerts works as a ITN Senior Operational Engineer at Belgacom and has over 11 years of experience with SQL Server.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Location:
Microsoft België
Corporate Village
Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3
1935 Zaventem

Tel: +32.2.503.31.13
Fax: +32.2.704.35.35

This Event is brought to you by Microsoft

Click here to register

12 Hours of SQL Server 2012: Partially Contained Databases Slide Deck Online

Steve — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:58:00 GMT

The webcast will be published soon. In the meantime I've put the slide deck online at http://blog.steveverschaeve.be/2012/03/05/12-hours-of-sql-server-20 Publish 12-partially-contained-databases-slide-deck/

Next SQLUG event: Power View with Johan Van Hoye. March, 27th

Steve — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:40:00 GMT

Power View is a new and exciting self-service data visualization capability in SQL Server 2012 for data from Analysis Services Tabular or PowerPivot. In early 2012, Financial Architects and Kohera joined forces to explore the potential of this technology from the perspective of a Microsoft ISV in the Finance Industry. The result of the project is an end-to-end solution that seamlessly adds these capabilities onto FinArch’s existing suite of applications. If you are planning to evaluate this technology or want to get started, join this session to learn all about the best practices and lessons we learned.

Johan Van Hoye is an independent consultant with 15 years of day-to-day experience on SQL Server and enterprise software development. Holding a degree in Applied Economics with specialization in Management ICT from the University of Antwerp, he has been at the intersection of the functional world of the Finance Industry and the Microsoft technology world ever since. Past roles include CTO at Financial Architects and CTO at 2imagine. In his current role at Financial Architects, he advises the company on product strategy and architecture from a technology viewpoint.

We are also pleased to be able to welcome a guest speaker from Microsoft Belgium who will give a short update on the current state of affairs in Microsoft BI.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Location:
Financial Architects nv
Verlorenbroodstraat 122B
9820 Merelbeke

Road description

tel : +32 9 272 64 10
fax : +32 9 272 64 59

This Event is brought to you by Financial Architects

Click here to register

12 hours of SQL Server 2012 on Feb, 24th

Frederik — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:41:00 GMT

Welcome to the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012, the next release of the Microsoft Cloud-Ready Information Platform that is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2012. During the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012 we'll walk you through all the new innovations we're bringing to the platform, or as we call them "The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012". Together with our 12 speakers, both local and international, we'll deliver 12 webcasts over 12 hours starting 12:12 CET on February 24th (too bad February 12th is a Sunday).

We'll dive into all the new things around Business Intelligence, Tier-1 Performance & Reliability, the Manageability enhancements and of course the Cloud readiness and integration of SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure.

Make sure to Register Today and explore the next release of SQL Server 2012 together with us.
By following at least 5 sessions, you get a chance to win a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone!

Technet Livemeeting - What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for SSIS, Nov 3rd

Frederik — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:23:00 GMT

This session shows off the new features of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services in SQL Server code-named “Denali”. We will highlight the migration process and the benefits of the new SSIS server architecture. We cover the many improvements made to increase developer productivity,as well as the enhancements to the current configuration,deployment,and management experiences.

Speaker Wesley Backelant

Registration info: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032495615&Culture=nl-BE

TechNet Live Meeting - How many nines do we need? Introducing SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn on Oct 25

Frederik — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:15:00 GMT

With natural disasters like earthquakes and fires in the news so often, and the economy still struggling to stabilize, IT Professionals know that many disasters can shut down a SQL Server.

Microsoft has already implemented a lot of high availability solutions in previous editions of SQL Server, like failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping,... But,when it comes to high availability, Denali changes the game for SQL Server deployments by introducing SQL Server AlwaysOn. You can increase application availability and get a better return on your hardware investments through a simplified high availability deployment and management experience.

In this session you will see the key capabilities and concepts of Database Availability and Instance Availability, deploying availability groups, configuration Application Failover using a Virtual Name, Initiating a failover to the secondary and possibilities with the active secondary.

Speaker Pieter Vanhove

Tuesday, October 25, 2011 2:00 PM

Level 300

Database Mirroring, Microsoft Clustering and Virtualization - 27/10/2011

Frederik — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:10:00 GMT

Our next session is planned for October, 27th: "Database Mirroring, Microsoft Clustering and Virtualization" with three seasoned SQL Server professionals.
Ludo Bernaerts (Belgacom), Karel Coenye (Kohera) and Peter De Seranno (bPost) will bring you 3 different types of solutions for your HA/DR plan for SQL Server 2008 (R2): Database mirroring, Microsoft clustering and virtualization.

You can expect an overview by technology followed by question time & panel discussion.

About The Speakers
Ludo Bernaerts, Karel Coenye and Peter De Seranno are seasond SQL Server professionals.

Some details will follow.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Announcing Belgian SQL Server Days on November 14th and 15th

Frederik — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:22:00 GMT

Yes, you read well, DAYS. SQL Server day has become a household name when you talk about SQL Server technology. And this year we go big, really big. Off course we'd like to welcome you again and hopefully snow won't be a kill-joy on this year's edition. Our team is working really hard on building the agenda so keep an eye on www.sqlserverdays.be for more information.

TechNet Live Meeting : Database Mirroring on SQL Server 2008 R2

Frederik — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:07:00 GMT

Database mirroring was introduced since Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It can be used to design high-availability and high-performance solutions for database redundancy. It is designed to maintain a hot standby server with a transitionally consistent copy of the database. Mirroring is cost-effective, speedy, requires no special hardware, and ensures transactional consistency. This live meeting will describe the database mirroring components, the different modes of database mirroring, failure types, failure scenarios, how it is different from other technologies and client redirection. Also a demo on how to setup databases mirroring with GUI and T-SQL will be shown.

Speaker: Pieter Vanhove (Kohera)

Time: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 2:00 PM

Registration: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032487684&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

PowerPivot / BISM and the future of a BI Solution - Slides available

karim — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:58:00 GMT

Last thursdya we had an exilirating presentation made by Marco Russo. The slide deck is available for download here.

Community Day 2011

karim — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:51:00 GMT

Community Day is back with the Fifth Edition of this annual community event on Microsoft technologies!

14 Microsoft User Groups combine their efforts to organize this unique networking and knowledge sharing

event.

Microsoft Community Day will take place on Thursday 23th June 2011 in Utopolis, Mechelen.

Click here for more details.