SQL PFE PASS Content Now Available!

First off, thanks to everyone who decided to attend a Microsoft SQL PFE session at the PASS Summit in Charlotte. We know you have a lot of great sessions to choose from, and we are thrilled if you happened to have chosen to listen in on one of ours. As promised, we are posting the demo code and slides from our sessions. The slides are already posted to the PASS site (the linkages have been corrected), so we will just post links below. The demos are also available for download.

SQL Server Performance and Monitoring in Windows Azure at Scale [CLD-307-M] Speaker(s): Daniel Sol
Duration: 75 minutes
Track: Cloud Application Development & Deployment
Slide Deck

This session will focus on lessons learned from performance tuning one of the largest Windows Azure SQL Database deployments in the world. We’ll work through the approach and methodology used in the process, especially in the non-functional testing and monitoring phase. We’ll also look at design decisions and match them to real examples, digging into how the monitoring requirements were defined and how the design was turned into reality.

SQL Server Transaction Log Internals [DBA-406-M]
Speaker(s): Tim ChapmanDenzil Ribeiro
Duration: 75 minutes
Track: Enterprise Database Administration & Deployment
Slide Deck , Demos

The transaction log plays the most critical role in any SQL Server database. In this session, you’ll learn the importance of the transaction log and go inside the roles it plays inside the database engine. You’ll see how logging and recovery work, explore the checkpoint process and write-ahead logging, and walk through the steps you need to take as a DBA to ensure proper management of the transaction log for a SQL Server database.

SQL Server Index Internals: A Deep Dive [DBA-405-M]
Speaker(s): Tim Chapman
Duration: 75 minutes
Track: Enterprise Database Administration & Deployment
PASS TV Video
Slide Deck ,  Demos

Have you ever wondered what an index actually looks like under the covers? Are you curious as to how SQL Server indexes retrieve data so quickly? In this session, we'll discuss index internals and how SQL Server creates, maintains, and uses indexes internally for normal operations. We’ll cover topics such as index data structures, query optimization (briefly), and maintaining indexes and statistics. After this session, you’ll understand the DMVs available in SQL Server 2012 for viewing index internals, what data is available at each level of the index btree structure and how to make meaningful use of that data, and how data is retrieved through efficient index usage.

Query Performance Tuning: A 12-Step Method [DBA-316]
Speaker(s): Thomas LaRock Tim Chapman
Duration: 75 minutes
Track: Enterprise Database Administration & Deployment
Slide Deck , Demos

Performance tuning is hard; everyone knows that. But it can be faster and easier if you have a defined process to follow. This session breaks performance tuning down into 12 easy-to-follow steps to help you understand what actions to take (and when) to improve query performance. If you’ve ever been handed a query and told to “make it go,” these 12 steps are what you need to get the job done in the shortest amount of time.