PASS Summit 2022 - Pre-Cons Were Amazing!

Other PASS Summit 2022 Days - Day 1 |  Day 2 | Day 3

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It's that time again...TUESDAY!

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I mean...NOVEMBER!

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OK fine...SUMMIT!

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I have very much missed in-person events and I am glad that Redgate (@Redgate) has managed to continue the @PASSDataSummit framework - virtual presentations are better than absolutely nothing, but it will never (*NEVER*) be the same as being together to not only share comments and questions but also for all of the other networking and social opportunities that in-person events bring.

(Along with that, I think having "hybrid" events like our current Summit dilutes the impact of the in-person event, although that is a conversation for another place, and as always is my $.02)

Now that I am here (AWESOME!) I wanted to share the highlights of my first two days here at Summit 2022.

On Monday I participated in the "Securing the Data Platform" pre-con given by one of my SQLfriends from Iowa, Ed Leighton-Dick (@eleightondick/blog).  Over the last eight years, Ed has grown his company Kingfisher Technologies into a great database security resource.

Ed's presentation followed the same style as many other security talks I have seen - he spent the first half of his talk scaring the bejeezus out of everyone to demonstrate the importance of adopting the principles covered in the second half of the talk!  Ed covered some well known hacks from the last ten years as well as several that I had never heard of at major organizations, and discussed the specific gaps that allowed the incidents to occur

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Ed have some great tips on encryption, including encrypting connection strings, proper ways to set up service accounts to prevent inappropriate escalation of privilege, and general security implementation best practices.

Tuesday brought the pre-con I was most excited for (sorry Ed) - the SQL Server 2022 Workshop presented by Bob Ward (@bobwardms) and an all-star team of Microsoft team members.  Bob's presentations are always "brain melting" and today's did not disappoint.

The main focus of the workshop is what Bob called the SQL 2022 "Wheel of Power" - five grouping of cool new features and improvements in the new product:

courtesy Bob Ward

The presentation ran through a wide variety of items, including:

• Linking Azure SQL Managed Instance to your traditional SQL Server instance for DR or to migrate to MI
• Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization with multiple query plans for a single stored procedure
• Cardinality Estimation Feedback that leverages Query Store to determine which Cardinality Estimator is better for your high impact queries
• Degree of Parallelism Feedback which similarly uses Query Store to discern if a lower DoP would be "good enough" for your query at lesser CPU cost
• Contained Availability Groups to duplicate instance level objects (including SQL Agent jobs!) as part of the AG
• Ledger to track data changes to document attempts to fraudulently change your data
• Improved T-SQL
• Major Intelligent Query Processing enhancements

...and so much more!

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The evening closed with the Welcome Reception, which as always was a fun opportunity to reconnect with #sqlfamily that I haven't seen since before the pandemic started.

I am looking forward to the rest of the week - it's going to be great!

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An aside - this is my first blog post in over a year; I haven't written much since COVID and have not presented at all - I hope to correct both of these going forward, although opportunities for in-person speaking are still greatly diminished after the demise of PASS SQL Saturdays; there are the "new" SQL Saturdays underwritten by the new covering organization, but there simply aren't that many events yet.

Thanks for reading everyone and hope to see you soon!