Microsoft Community Tech Days [Ahmedabad 2010]

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It was time for community Tech days at Ahmedabad on 11th Dec 2010. I was attending the community tech days for the first time and was eager to listen to noted MVP’s and MS Tech evangelist’s like Pinal Dave , Rushabh Mehta, Jacob Sebastian and Vinod Kumar.

The Event Began with Jacob Sebastian presenting a talk on ‘SQL tips and Tricks for .net developers’. The focus of the talk was on ‘server side paging’. he stared the talk by comparing application side paging and server side paging. then, after explaining the application side paging and it’s drawback, the discussion was steered towards server side paging. He then demonstrated the method to apply server side paging. For SQL server 2000, he discussed the concept of temp tables. For SQL server 2005, he discussed the concept of CTE and ROW_NUMBER. For SQL server 2011, he demonstrated OFFSET/FETCH. The OFFSET/FETCH is very convenient to use. The best thing about it is that it keeps our code clean. i can’t wait to try my hands on server side paging. Thanks sir, for sharing such an amazing optimization tip with us.

The next talk was delivered by Pinal Dave. i have been following his blog for quite some time now and i proclaim that it has increased my knowledge on SQL Technology. i had heard him before when he came to my college – Nirma University, to give a talk on ‘Database optimization’. He never ceases to amaze me. The best thing about him is that he discusses a serious topic in a light mood. He gave a talk on ‘Best Database practice for Sharepoint server’. The three key things to be remembered where 1) keep the statistics on for most cases 2) Set Auto create statistics and Auto Update Statistics to TRUE 3) Pre Size Database for Insert queries. Thank you sir!

The next talk was delivered by Rushabh mehta. He shared his knowledge on ‘Self Service Business Intelligence’. i must admit that i had ceased to Blink for the entire session. He demonstrated jaw dropping, Ultra cool technologies. He had a perfect metaphor for a ‘self service Business Intelligence’ and that was ‘a fancy train that everyone in the organization want to hop into’. He elucidated the difference and i realized the difference between BI and self service BI: Business Intelligence enables an organization to make better decisions. And with self service Business Intelligence enables the user to customize reports without the help of an IT personnel. In other words, it’s a user friendly Business Intelligence. He also demonstrated an Excel 2010 add on called Power Pivot . It’s an Amazing Tool. he also showed ‘SQL server reporting service’. Thank you Rushabh Sir for Igniting a spark!

The next talk was delivered by Vinod Kumar. He gave a talk on ‘Managing your Future, Managing your Time’. The talk was very inspiring. The talk was peppered with great videos and it made the talk more interesting. Thanks for inspiration. It will help me when i step into the real world!

Prabhjot singh Bakshi and Dhananjay Kumar also Delivered Talks on Interesting topics.

Thank You Team Community Tech Days at Microsoft and MVP’s for an amazing event!

Read Pinal Dave’s Event Report: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/12/17/sqlauthority-news-a-successful-community-techdays-at-ahmedabad-december-11-2010/

Thanks again!

Ted video: The web secret stories by jonathan harris

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The idea behind the tools demonstrated are simple yet profound. They revolve around a concept that ‘humans desire to express themselves’. The tool fetches data from the blogs around the world and mines it to give useful insights. The speaker demonstrated couple of tools and in both tools, the data visualization methods employed was state-of-the-art. such videos deepen my fascination for data mining and information management. you can watch the video to get an insight into how ‘feelings’ can be mined (‘analyzed’) to understand the world around us.

Book review: Getting Real by 37signals

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The Book “Getting real” is a paradigm shifter. it’s worth reading for anyone who is remotely connected to the field of making software. i devoured one article after after another and stopped only after reading the entire book. The book has fresh ideas that are worth reflecting upon and the approach is unorthodox. it defies the conventional software engineering approach and tries to explain simple steps to build a web application. Couple of ideas like ‘ask the customer, what they don’t want’ and ‘cutting down on unwanted features’ really struck a chord with my belief system.

In a Nutshell, a must read for anyone who wants to make a world class web app/software

Link: 37signals web page