Welcome to ManoharPunna.com. This is my first post on MY site. I will start with a timeline blog related to my passion, SQL Server. On October 4th, 2014 in Bangalore there was session planned on SQL Server, SQL Talks. The event was hosted by the SQL Bangalore user group at Microsoft, Signature building, Embassy Golf Links, Domlur. The most exciting factor which got my interest was the show stopper of this show. None other than the legend, known for his deep SQL sessions, Bob Ward.

It was exciting to know that Bob Ward is in India and delivering a session. To add to the excitement there were sessions from Arvind Shyamsunder (the first MCM in India), Tejas Shas and Pradeep.M.M on Performance troubleshooting, Kane Conway on Power BI and predictive analysis and Balmukund and Vinod on SSMS Tips and Tricks. I would not miss that for anything in the world. It is a long weekend. The buses are jam packed. Luckily I got the tickets and booked the hotel. I was afraid of anything that may go wrong for me to attend this event.

As I thought the first hurdle started the day before the event. I cannot make an early checkin without paying an additional days charges. So I called up few of my friends and everyone is on vacation on the long weekend. Finally I called up Amit Bansal for any suggestions and he asked me to come over. I will write a separate blog on the time I spent with Amit and his great host role. 🙂

So we (I and my wife, a weekend getaway for her 🙂 ) arrive in Bangalore. I and Amit make it on time to the event. The first thing we do entering the conference room is walk straight to Bob and greet him. And the next person I meet is Tejas Shah welcoming with his ever smiling face. We got the best view seats and got ready got the cruise of SQL knowledge from the legend. The first session starts as Bob takes us through the memory lane of SQL Server with all his expertise. Its amazing that a person with that much knowledge can just amaze you with his memory on SQL Memory Architecture. 😉

The second session was drive through the case scenarios by Tejas Shas and Pradeep.M.M. I go back with these gurus when I worked for Microsoft IGTSC. Pradeep was my Technical Lead and I have taken Tejas’ help on couple of cases when working at Microsoft. It is always good to meet people from past. I revisited my old days with Microsoft and the troubleshooting techniques used there. They talked about few cases that were dealt by Microsoft and the depth of troubleshooting involved. It was a pure learning experience.

After lunch we had Arving Shyamsunder to talk about development and few cool features in Visual Studio online. How you can control issues before deploying into production. Working on data model to identify certain code bust and build bust before pushing them to any environments. A lot of takeaways from this sessions and only a man with his experience can deliver such great session and make it look so easy.

It was Bob Ward again and you would never get a thought of post lunch sleep when there is so much excitement. This time Bob tells you what you can do before reaching to Microsoft for help. Yes, he explains the best steps that you can do before you call the support. The demos involve solving issues for high case volume that come to Microsoft. The top ones on the list are Backup Restores, data corruption, Performance issues, Assertion dumps to name few. So the tips are always valuable from the expert and the legend himself.

We had the next session from Balmukund and Vinod on the simple and efficient tips and tricks with SSMS and few very useful tools like tablediff. And towards the end of the day the energy these experts bring to the attendees is awesome. You will experience only when you listen from them. Fun and learning. 🙂

Kane has his way with Power BI and predictive analysis. A good way to prove our point in many cases as a DBA is to use effective reports with the data we have. Kane’s session is all about that.

Over all the event was a wonderful time spent with the experts and their knowledge flow. Its our bandwidth to accept the flow of knowledge and use it efficiently. Last but not the least the group which has made this happen… THANK YOU.

Regards,
Manu

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