Sessions

Keynote – Managing Data in Your Current and Future Environment
In the next 5 years, we will store more than twice the data that we have stored since the beginning of the computer age. Managing this data and turning it into useful information will be the key to survival and success for every organization. Traditional applications and architectures continue to play an important role in supporting current businesses. But newer approaches and standards such as consolidation, virtualization, and true scale-as-you-grow architectures are rapidly becoming the norm as businesses evolve. Find out more about how Microsoft’s recent release of SQL Server 2008 positions your organization for success by improving your ability to address current needs while getting your organization ready to adopt newer or alternate architectures when your business demands it.

Session 1 - Upgrading to SQL Server 2008: Pros and Cons
With the release of SQL Server 2008, your organization can benefit from many new features. But how do you get there? What are the pitfalls that you need to watch out for? What tools and techniques are available that will help you in this effort? What will it take to upgrade to SQL Server 2008? Will you encounter compatibility or performance problems? If so, how do you mitigate the risks or solve those problems? These questions will be addressed for upgrades from SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 along with best practices collected from hundreds of upgrades performed around the world. The focus of this session will be the relational engine.

Session 2 – HA and DR in the SQL Server World: Challenges and Opportunities with Old and New Versions
As users and businesses become more dependent on instantly and constantly available access to critical information, service-level agreements for High Availability and Disaster Recovery become increasingly demanding. And there is no end in sight as IT budgets remain the same or reduced. Consolidated systems further add to the pressure as IT departments are asked to do more with less but are still expected to manage the same or higher levels of business criticality. SQL Server has had native technologies/approaches for HA and DR. In SQL Server 2000, Clustering and Log Shipping were the vehicles. SQL Server 2005 added Database Mirroring. Find out how the enhancements in SQL Server 2008 improve upon these technologies and how HA/DR have evolved from SQL Server 2000 to today.

Session 3 – SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence: Are the New Features Something You’ll Really Use?
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers a complete foundation of Business Intelligence with scalable, enterprise-ready data warehousing. The feature-rich functionality of the 2008 platform puts timely and mission-critical information in the hands of your organization. Unlock the hidden knowledge embedded in your applications and gain amazing insight and vision into your data to expand your competitive advantage. With up to 87 percent of all BI projects rated as failures or not meeting objectives, find out how SQL Server 2008 can help you be in the other 13 percent. If you’re already taking advantage of the Microsoft SQL Server suite of BI tools in prior versions, learn how to maximize the new features of 2008 with optimized star-query joins, merge, tablix, CDC, lookup and pipeline performance, and numerous other improvements.