Jessica M. Moss

Last week the SQL PASS organization held the annual PASS Summit in Seattle, Washington.  The PASS Summit is a week-long conference that brings thousands of SQL Server, Business Intelligence, and Business Analyst professionals together to learn all about best practices in use today and about new features coming in the next version.  I was able to attend by volunteering to help with PASS and by the good graces of my company and had an amazing week!  Many thanks go to all of the organizers, speakers, volunteers, and sponsors who put on another great event. The conference has two full-day preconference sessions on Monday and Tuesday which can be purchased in addition to the conference.  These trainings are amazing and definitely worth your while if you want more training.  I ended up flying out on Tuesday to start with the main conference on Wednesday.  On Tuesday, I explored Seattle a bit, and even visited the space needle (my first time in all my year...

For the fifth year in a row, I am excited to present at the PASS Summit in Seattle, WA.  The PASS Summit is the premier SQL Server conference in the United States for anyone interested in SQL Server, SQL Server Business Intelligence, and Microsoft data technologies.  I always learn something new when I attend, and I enjoy catching up with old friends.  If you’re a new friend that I haven’t met yet, please introduce yourself to me at one of the following locations: 11/5/2012 8:30am-4:30pm SSIS Design Patterns pre-conference session 11/5/2012 6:00pm-9:00pm Networking Dinner at Gordon Biersch 11/6/2012 6:30pm-8:00pm PASS Summit 2012 Welcome Reception 11/7/2012 11:30am-12:30pm Book Signing – PASS Bookstore 11/8/2012 1:00pm-2:00pm & 3:00pm-4:00pm Book Signing – Apress Booth 11/9/2012 9:45am-11:00am Jessica’s Session: “Getting Reports on Your Schedule” 11/9/2012 11:30am-12:30pm Birds of a Feather table: Data Warehousing Hope to see you then!

Thank you to everyone who attended Michelle Ufford's and my presentation on SSIS Design Patterns for the 24 Hours of PASS session.  Michelle's demo materials can be found here: http://sqlfool.com/summit2012/ .  My demo materials for a 2012 template and some reporting can be found here: http://www.jessicammoss.com/Demo/24HOP_Demos.zip . If you missed it, the session recording is available here: http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/fall2012/ . And if you want to see more design patterns, come see us in Seattle for a full day training session: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3159 . Enjoy!

A book, a pre-conference training session, and a webinar - oh my! The Book Over the past two years, I have been lucky enough to work with some of the great SSIS-gurus, Andy Leonard , Matt Masson , Tim Mitchell , and Michelle Ufford , on a book project that has finally been realized.  I am pleased to announce the publication of SQL Server 2012 Integration Services Design Patterns ( amazon | apress ).  Thank you to everyone who helped with the writing, editing, and reviewing of the book. The Pre-conference Training Session The PASS Summit has invited the ENTIRE author team to give a pre-conference training session on Monday, November 5, 2012.  This training session gives you the chance to ask anything you want from the author team and take home advanced knowledge that can immediately be implemented.  SSIS Design Patterns description: In this full-day session, the "SSIS Design Patterns" (Apress, 2012) author team – Matt Masson, Tim Mitchell, Jessica M. Moss,...

I am excited to be presenting a pre-conference session at the Atlanta SQLSaturday on April 13, 2012.  The session is entitled Learn Reporting Services in a Day! and is a full day introduction to SSRS 2008 R2.  It costs $99.00 through March 15, and $109.00 after that.  There are only 16 seats left, so don’t hesitate to sign up here: http://ssrsinaday.eventbrite.com/ In addition, there is a full slate of sessions on April 14, 2012, including my session: Report Parts: Increasing Productivity Since 2008R2. Here is the information about the pre-conference session: SQL Server MVP, Jessica M. Moss, presents an exciting, introductory, full day training session on SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. In the three-part class, Jessica will teach you how to build reports from the ground up. In Part 1, learn the basics of report development, including picking a report development tool and creating your first report. Part 2 delves into visualizations, groupings, and dri...

I have a few events coming up that I wanted to let you knew about.  If you attend, be sure to say hi! Extract, Transform, and Load your Data Warehouse The SQLPASS Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter always provides great information for both beginners and more advanced BI developers.  I’ll be presenting at noon EST on 5/14/2010 on Extract, Transform, and Load your Data Warehouse .  We’ll talk about why ETL is different/important for data warehousing and give examples of more advanced dimensional load scenarios you may face. Adding SSRS Report Bells and Whistles I’m traveling down to Raleigh, NC to speak for the Triangle SQL Server User Group on 5/18/2010 at 6:30pm EST.  I’ve really enjoyed giving this presentation, where I speak about best design practices for SSRS 2008.  I hope to get lots of great questions as well! Easier than Ever Report Authoring in SSRS 2008 R2 The second annual 24 Hours of PASS will be held from on May 19th for the entire...

One of my favorite times of the year is the PASS Community Summit.  It's five jam-packed days of SQL Server sessions by Microsoft employees, MVPs, and the people that you read about in technical books.  It's pre-conference and post-conference workshops on all different levels of topics of SQL Server.  It's a way to meet new people who love to do what you love to do and connect with old friends who you only see once a year.  It's a way to get a job or sell a job.  It's all of this and so much more that I can't even begin to describe. I'm excited to attend for the third year starting tomorrow.  If you are attending the Summit, I hope you'll come and introduce yourself.  You can find me at one of these locations/times: Monday, November 2, 2009 4:30pm-6:30pm   Networking Pre-Con - I'm really excited to learn about the best ways to meet people and meet other people who are interested in the same thing! Tuesday, November 3, 2009 11:45am...

As promised, I wanted to let you know about a few events where I'll be in the upcoming weeks. This Saturday (10/17), I'm making the trek up to East Iowa for their SQLSaturday event. They pulled in quite a few great speakers, and they've also invited me to speak on my favorite BI products: SSRS, SSIS, and SSAS! It looks like registration is still open, so if you're in the area, you should definitely sign up, come by, and say hi. The following week, I am pleased to be speaking at the Charlotte SQL Server User Group on Extract, Transform, and Load your Data Warehouse . I'll be making the drive down (audio book suggestions, anyone?) on Thursday, October 22 to speak that evening. I'm looking forward to meeting new people and seeing some old friends in the area. I'll also be staying over for a soon-to-be-announced event on Friday. The first week of November, I'll be at the PASS Community Summit . These is my third year attending the conference, second...

Over the past two months, I had the honor of presenting at many user groups and conferences. I wanted to put together some information for those who attended (and for those who were unable to attend!). If you saw either "Building Reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008" or "New Features of SQL Server Integration Services 2008" and are excited to get your hands on a SQL Server 2008 instance, but your company won't upgrade... you can download a free trial/evaluation version from Microsoft. Maybe you can even show your boss some of the things you learned from my presentation! @AndyLeonard: “You got your SSIS in my Twitter!” @JessicaMMoss: “You got your Twitter in my SSIS!” [Previous dialogue shamelessly stolen from Brent Ozar's blog because it's a perfect lead-in to...] For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter , it's a micro-blogging tool / social network platform that has completely taken off over the past year. Andy Leonard invited ...

This will be my first year attending the PASS Summit as a speaker rather than an attendee. I will be joining Rushabh Mehta to present a spotlight session entitled "Building an SSIS Management Framework". The PASS Summit is a great conference that focuses on SQL Server and Business Intelligence. Because it is in Seattle, there will be a ton of people from the SQL Server Developer Team and SQLCAT. If you have any questions about SQL Server, this is the place to be. You still have a few weeks left to sign up. Solid Quality Mentors is also offering a discount code applicable to the cost of the conference. You can get that code from here: http://www.solidq.com/na/pass.aspx . So now you have no excuse left to not sign up!

After recovering from a serious lack of sleep from presenting at SQLTeach :), I wanted to jot down a couple of thoughts about the conference. 1) Jean-Rene Roy puts on an amazing conference. The DevTeach conference has been around since 2003, and this was the first year it was in Toronto. 2) The quality and experience of the speakers is of the highest quality, and since the conference is fairly small, attendees get a great experience with often individualized advice and attention. 3) I despise scaled evaluations. The scale used at this conference was as such: bad, average, good, excellent. While my presentations were rated fairly well, the problem is that this system promotes subjectivity under the guide of objectivity. Who is to say what a "good" versus an "excellent" presentation is? Are you a glass half empty or a glass half full type of person? 4) The conference contained a whole Agile track. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with these speakers le...

I'm thrilled to be speaking at the SQLTeach Toronto conference in a few weeks. I will be presenting two topics: "SSIS Tips & Tricks" and "Migrating DTS Packages to SSIS". If you're going to be in the Toronto area from May 12 - 16, come check it out! A quick preview of what you can expect at the SQLTeach/DevTeach conference: Silverlight 2.0 post conference workshop Party with Palermo Scott Hanselman keynote An amazing line-up of speakers on .Net, SQL, and development artchitectures I hope to see you there!