Looking After Yourself - Dealing with this New World

After the success of last years open session about Mental Health, we are returning with another session lead by Rob designed to enable you to be more capable dealing with the new Modern world

Old Name - New CLI - why you should take a look at sqlcmd

Introduced with SQL Server 2005 and replacing osql, sqlcmd has been a part of SQL Server professionals toolbox for a long time now.
Many people only know it from the sqlcmd mode switch in SSMS, while others use it within automation as a lightweight easily available query runner. I have long recommended that DBAs are familiar with using it as it may be the only option to query an instance in severe emergencies.
Times they are a changing.
There is a new sqlcmd available and it has some awesome new capabilities.

Let me introduce you to the new sqlcmd in a fun filled demo session and show you the new things it can do and why they will be of benefit to all Data Professionals

We will cover deploying a database into a container from a backup with one command.

Querying it, Opening it in Azure Data Studio, all from the command line and much more

Old Name - New CLI - why you should take a look at sqlcmd

Introduced with SQL Server 2005 and replacing osql, sqlcmd has been a part of SQL Server professionals toolbox for a long time now.
Many people only know it from the sqlcmd mode switch in SSMS, while others use it within automation as a lightweight easily available query runner. I have long recommended that DBAs are familiar with using it as it may be the only option to query an instance in severe emergencies.
Times they are a changing.
There is a new sqlcmd available and it has some awesome new capabilities.

Let me introduce you to the new sqlcmd in a fun filled demo session and show you the new things it can do and why they will be of benefit to all Data Professionals

Why every project needs a dev container - an introduction

Dev containers are a VS Code feature that allow us to define the perfect development environment for our project.

This enables a definition of a working development environment for all of your team or your open-source contributors to be quickly and easily provisioned and updated. It will even work in a browser! No more worrying about the right hardware, software installations, dependencies, or updates. You can control it all with dev containers and make it simple and easy.

In this session we'll cover why dev containers can be so useful, show off an example we built to make contributing to dbachecks (an open-source module combining pester & dbatools to test our infrastructure) easy, and how you can easily add a dev container to your own projects.

A SQL environment for test or how we provided a dbatools training day at SQLBits using devcontainers

In March Jess Pomfret and I gave a Training Day for 5 million* attendees about dbatools.

For those that dont know, dbatools is the most popular SQL Server open source PowerShell module and has used blog posts from many of the SQL community as inspiration for over 900 million* commands written by over 4tn* contributors.

As we did not know even right up till the day whether we would be delivering together or separately, in person or remotely, we decided to put our demo into a repository and deliver it from a controlled environment (two containers) using GitHub Actions, Docker Hub and VS Code.

We learned some things along the way and had some fun also and we shall share this all with you.

Whilst this is about dbatools, PowerShell, containers, Pester and some fun. It will also show you how you can create a SQL Server environment which will enable you to repeatedly run demos, allow others to run the same code as you.

* It is highly likely that some numbers may have been exaggerated

Automate your DBA tasks with dbatools and dbachecks

Let us show you how easy it is to use PowerShell to accomplish many everyday tasks straight from the command line with the community developed modules dbatools and dbachecks.

Join Jess Pomfret and Rob Sewell, two of the dbatools in a Month of Lunches authors and take your dbatools and dbachecks skills to the next level or be introduced to dbatools and learn how effective it can make you. We will show you the skills, scripts, and tricks that we have learned with dbatools and dbachecks and tell you how they have rocketed our careers

There will be many practical examples of how dbatools and dbachecks can help to save time in DBA administration duties

- Creating Availability Groups
- Syncing Agent Jobs and Logins between replicas
- Finding SQL Instances on your estate
- Working with Central Management Server
- Disaster Recovery
- Backup Testing
- Simple instance migrations
- Complex instance migrations
- Tracking Activity
- Simplify application upgrades with database snapshots
- Working with other community tools with dbatools
- Encompassing dbatools in DevOps
- Validating your estate
- Using dbatools in the cloud (i.e. working with Azure SQL Database)

And much much more

Come and join us for a great day of PowerShell and SQL full of demos and useful solutions that you will be able to take back to your workplace. You will improve your knowledge and skills, see how the modern DBA will work and have fun at the same time.

Who Are You?

You are a DBA, senior or junior, looking after 1 or 100,000 instances, a developer who interacts with SQL Server, an accidental DBA or you have DevOps in your job title.
You are interested in improving your PowerShell skills for SQL Server or reducing the time you and your team spend administering SQL Server.
You have spent 1 day or 20 years working with SQL Server.
You know that you work in a field where automation is king and want to understand more of what is available.
You are interested in learning and improving your automation skillset.

What do you need?

All you need is yourself! We would recommend that you bring something to take notes with as well as a minimum.

All scripts and slides will be provided to you. If you wish to follow along with most of the demos you should have access to a machine with PowerShell v 5 or above with a SQL Server 2012 or above instance.

20 Productivity tools we use to make life easier

You are busy, we are busy, everyone is busy. These are the tools that two busy consultants use to improve their productivity.

We want to tell you about the tools that we use; that maximise our time, simplify our life, reduce our key strokes and generally make us appear more amazing. So that you can use them too.

Think PowerShell and SQL is meh? Meet dbatools!

Come and join one of the creators of the most popular SQL Server open source PowerShell module and learn how we have used blog posts from many of the SQL community as inspiration for over 900 million* commands written by over 4tn* contributors.

Let me show you how easy it is to use PowerShell to accomplish many everyday tasks straight from the command line with the community developed module dbatools.

I will even demonstrate in containers using Jupyter Notebooks that you can try out for yourself on your own machine.

Afraid of PowerShell?
Worried its too complicated?
Don't want to go through the learning curve?

Let me show you with plenty of demos how easy and straight forward it can be and I will save you time starting Monday

Want to restore an entire servers databases to the latest available point in time of the backups in just one line?
Be useful to know the Last DBCC Check for your entire estate in only one line of code?
Need to test your restores but it's complicated?
and many many more
All this in a fast-paced, fun session
* Some numbers may have been exaggerated

Using PowerShell with Excel

You are often required to put data into Excel for sharing with business users. This is frequently a manual process involving copying and pasting and manipulating in Excel.

Come and lose the CTRL + C CTRL + V by learning how the ImportExcel module can help to automate this for you, including creating charts and conditionally formatting cells.

Notebooks, PowerShell and Excel Automation

Everyone loves Excel. A common request that I hear is can you put that into Excel for me, please. I love automation and so have combined two of my favourite tools PowerShell and Notebooks. Using Jupyter Notebooks to accomplish regular tasks and run-books has become common over the past year.

A particular use-case that my clients have found very useful is to quickly create Excel sheets of information using Notebooks, PowerShell, and the ImportExcel module.

Let me share my experience with you and show you how to create your own Notebooks for your users and the tactics I have learned to enable users to self-service and create their own Excel Workbooks.

A deeper dive into dev containers for your project

Dev containers are a VS Code feature that allow us to define the perfect development environment for our project.

This enables a definition of a working development environment for all of your team or your open-source contributors to be quickly and easily provisioned and updated. It will even work in a browser! No more worrying about the right hardware, software installations, dependencies or updates. You can control it all with dev containers and make it simple and easy.

In this session we will dive deeper into dev containers and take a look at how we can use multiple containers for our development, multiple configurations for our dev containers, how to customise the entire experience and how to connect to your containers externally.

This sesssion is a natural follow on from our Why every project needs a dev container session but can also live on its lonesome