Join Me In Orlando for TechEd: IT Professionals

Although you probably can't tell from the state of my blog (I don't think I have posted a truly technical post so far this year) I've been awfully busy lately, and it looks like 2008 is going to only get busier. How do I know this?

I know because I just got email confirmation that I've been accepted to deliver two SQL Server Integration Services sessions at TechEd 2008 US IT Professionals in Orlando this June.









I've been accepted to present these two sessions:

Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services Deployment Best Practices
So you've built a set of SSIS packages to populate your data warehouse, and everything works great on your development environment - but what next? SSIS has a great set of tools, but when it comes to preparing for and executing a seamless deployment from development into test and finally into production, it's not always obvious what tools to use or how to best use them. In this session you'll learn how to prepare for and execute a seamless deployment of complex ETL solutions through a repeatable, testable process for both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. If you're tired of saying "but it worked on my machine!" then this is one session you can't afford to miss.

Moving Beyond Package Configurations: An End-to-End Approach for Custom Package Portability
SQL Server Integration Services includes Package Configurations – a powerful mechanism for implementing location independence in SSIS packages, and an integral part of successful SSIS deployments. But package configurations are not adequate to every SSIS deployment scenario, and unfortunately there is no mechanism to extend or customize their behavior – it’s all or nothing. This means that if package configurations don’t give you what you need, you need to build your own replacement from scratch. This session will present a complete end-to-end replacement for package configurations, implemented using the SSIS .NET API. This solution includes not only the core code to implement the configuration functionality but also a set of development and management utilities to ease deployment, testing and validation tasks that “just work” with package configurations but which must be replaced when using a custom solution. We will look at the design criteria that necessitated a move away from the built-in package configurations feature, the code used to implement the solution, focusing on the challenges presented by the SSIS API, and a real-world SSIS solution in which the code and tools presented have been used for large scale production deployments.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Hopefully you'll be able to join me there. I had an amazing time presenting (especially my SSIS sessions!) at the MCT Summit conferences in Berlin and Redmond over the past month or so, and I know that these TechEd sessions will be at least as much fun - probably more.[1] If you're planning on being at the TechEd IT Pro conference, you should definitely make sure that you attend both of these sessions. And if you're not planning on attending - why not? There's no time like the present to start talking to your boss!


[1] And if I can deliver them without getting horribly ill that will be even better. I came home from the Redmond MCT Summit with the worst flu I've had in 10 years or more, and have been laid low for more than a week now. I'm over the worst of it, but I still feel like I've been run over by a truck or two...