Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 340-342

SQL Fundamentals for Data Analysts

From early database management systems to modern data platforms like Microsoft Fabric, SQL has withstood the test of time. This language can be powerful in its navigation of data relationships, calculation of detailed or aggregate values, or adjustments of records stored in tables. All of these capabilities are fundamental skills for data analysts, regardless of whether you are performing ad-hoc analysis or preparing data for a report.

This introductory, hands-on course is for those who haven't taken a database course and would like to learn practical SQL querying. Join this workshop to learn SQL from the ground up, starting with the SELECT statement and its primary clauses, moving up to JOINs and functions, and more tools to aid you in your data analysis.

Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 320-321

Automate All the Things: A Deep Dive into PowerShell, dbatools & dbachecks for SQL Server

As SQL Server environments grow, traditional, manual DBA techniques stop scaling. More servers, more databases, and higher expectations demand automation that is consistent, repeatable, and safe. PowerShell—combined with dbatools and dbachecks—provides DBAs with a proven way to meet that challenge.

This full-day workshop focuses on using PowerShell as a core DBA skill to manage SQL Server environments at scale. You will learn how to apply PowerShell fundamentals specifically to SQL Server administration and how to use dbatools to automate common and complex tasks across many instances. Topics include server discovery and inventory, configuration management, backup and restore automation, migrations, security auditing, and availability group operations.

The session then turns to proactive validation with dbachecks. You will learn how to define and enforce standards, run health checks across entire estates, customize checks to match business requirements, and capture results over time to identify drift and emerging issues—without creating alert fatigue.

By the end of the day, you will understand how to replace manual, server-by-server work with scalable automation, use PowerShell confidently in production, and build a repeatable approach to managing and validating SQL Server environments using dbatools and dbachecks.

Stop clicking. Start automating. Learn how to manage SQL Server environments the way modern DBAs do—repeatably, safely, and at scale—using PowerShell, dbatools, and dbachecks.

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 340-342

SQL Server 2025 Deep Dive: Essential Innovations for DBAs and Database Developers

SQL Server 2025 is the AI database for enterprises. But there are more new things than just AI—in this demo filled, full-day workshop, you will learn about: • Engine improvements that make everything just run faster • How SQL Server 2025 helps you operate more securely • Further enhancements to high availability • Building event-driven architectures with change event streaming

Master the benefits of the latest release of SQL Server and how to deploy it in your organization.

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 343-344

Advanced Data Protection Strategies with SQL Server: A Hands-on Workshop

This workshop equips developers and database professionals with the practical skills needed to implement robust data protection in their SQL Server environments. It creates systems where sensitive information remains secure even from privileged users like database administrators.

Through structured, hands-on exercises, participants will:

Discover and Classify sensitive data using SQL Server's built-in tools—establishing the foundation for a comprehensive security strategy

Implement Column-Level Protection through Dynamic Data Masking and Always Encrypted, including advanced scenarios with secure enclaves that maintain query performance while protecting data confidentiality

Deploy Row-Level Security to enforce granular access controls based on user context, ensuring proper data isolation and visibility

Establish Audit Trails to monitor and track all interactions with classified data, supporting compliance requirements and enabling security incident investigations

Throughout the day, participants will progressively build a secured database and a .NET web application, integrating each security feature into a cohesive solution. By the session's end, attendees will have developed a proof-of-concept that demonstrates enterprise-grade data protection techniques that satisfy security requirements while maintaining application functionality.

Wednesday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 347-348

What's new in SQL tools

Databases and technology are evolving quickly, and the tools you use every day are evolving with it. In this session, we’ll take a tour of what’s new and what’s next across Microsoft’s SQL tooling ecosystem, with plenty of demos from SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and Visual Studio Code. We’ll also explore how GitHub Copilot is being integrated to help you interact with SQL more efficiently directly in the tools you already use. Beyond the core editors, we’ll cover key advances in database CI/CD and client SDKs, showing how they fit together to support modern development practices. No matter your level of expertise, this session will help you understand how recent changes to the SQL tools can make them work better for you.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 347-348

Database Backups 101

In this session, we will be covering the basics of SQL Server backups. This includes an overview of the different types of backups, how they work, and their differences. We will also discuss backup strategies, performance optimization, and ways to improve backup processes. Additionally, we will delve into topics such as compression, TDE (Transparent Data Encryption), and setting up alerts. Furthermore, we will explore free and paid backup solutions that are available for ease of use.

Wednesday 1:20 PM - 1:40 PM · Collab Studio

How a K-12 District Built a Trusted, AI-Ready Data Foundation: 90% Fewer Reporting Errors, Lean Team

Fragmented source systems, manual reporting bottlenecks, and data that nobody quite trusts: these aren't education problems, they're enterprise problems.

In this 20-minute session, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District shares how a lean two-developer team consolidated siloed systems, automated pipeline development on Microsoft SQL Server, and reduced reporting errors by more than 90%; all while building a governed foundation ready for AI.

The technical lessons translate directly to any organization wrestling with resource constraints or the challenge of establishing data trust at scale, and you'll leave with practical takeaways on accelerating pipeline development, improving data reliability, and architecting infrastructure that's audit-ready today and AI-ready tomorrow.

Wednesday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 347-348

Enhanced Maintenance Techniques for Workload Stabilization

We all have maintenance running on our databases, right? Well this session is all about enhancing your maintenance through metrics and data gathered about your database and indexes. The focus of this session is going to be where you get this data, what does it mean and translating it into a great maintenance plan so that every second maintenance is running you are getting more stable workloads. There is more to it, join me to find out how this is done. You will be glad you did. And Yes I will be using PowerShell to help me.

Wednesday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 335-336

You Can't AI Your Way Out of Bad Data: A Practitioner's Blueprint for AI-Ready Data on Azure and SQL

Every organization wants to build AI-powered analytics. Most are discovering that AI doesn't fix bad data, it scales it. The real blocker isn't the model, the GPU, or the orchestration layer. It's the warehouse underneath.

In this session, Kevin Marshbank,Principal Consultant at The Data Vault Shop and a data warehouse architect with over 15 years building enterprise data environments, will walk through what it actually takes to structure a data environment that AI can work with. Drawing on hands-on implementations across Azure Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, and SQL Server, Kevin will break down the architectural decisions that determine whether your AI initiatives succeed or stall; regardless of the modeling methodology you've chosen.

This is not a session about picking the right data model. It's about the properties that any well-built warehouse must have to serve AI reliably: full historicity, traceable lineage, rich metadata, enforced governance, and semantic clarity. Kevin will show how these properties are achieved in practice, and why they're harder to retrofit than to build in from the start.

A central theme of the session is metadata, not as a documentation afterthought, but as the architectural connective tissue that makes AI workloads possible at scale. Kevin will cover how metadata-driven development approaches, which he applies in production using WhereScape's automation tooling on Azure, allow teams to generate pipelines, lineage, governance artifacts, and documentation from a single design layer, reducing manual coding by over 90% while producing the kind of governed, traceable data structures that AI systems actually need.

Attendees will walk away able to:

1. Audit their own data architecture against concrete AI-readiness criteria
2. Understand the metadata and governance gaps most likely to derail AI initiatives in production
3. Evaluate automation approaches that reduce manual development burden while building AI-ready structure into the warehouse from the ground up
4. Apply practical patterns Kevin has used across real Azure-based implementations to accelerate AI readiness without starting over

Wednesday 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM · Collab Studio

Start with the Data Estate, Finish with a Unified Platform

Data challenges begin long before analytics or AI. A fragmented data estate spanning multiple databases, platforms, and technologies creates barriers to consistency, scalability, and trust. Learn how organizations address this challenge in two phases. First, by migrating and aligning their data estate to Azure, reducing fragmentation and improving manageability across SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and other environments. Second, by modernizing their data platform using Microsoft Fabric to unify data, streamline analytics, and improve reporting. Through real-world examples, we’ll discuss: • How to assess and modernize a diverse data estate • What changes once data is better aligned to Azure • Lessons learned from enterprise data estate modernization

Wednesday 3:50 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 345-346

Smarter Queries Start Here: Vector Search in SQL Server & Azure SQL DB

Microsoft SQL databases now support vector search and embeddings, enabling semantic queries that go beyond keywords. This session shows how to store, index, and query embeddings using familiar T-SQL. You’ll learn how to power smarter search, recommendations, and natural language interfaces—all within your database. Real-world examples will highlight practical use cases. If you're ready to level up your queries, this is where it starts.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 345-346

Advanced Data Protection Strategies with Azure SQL

Organizations handle increasing amounts of growth with their sensitive data. Data engineers must protect their data from external attackers, application users, and even privileged employees like database administrators.

This session will teach you how to protect your data while maintaining functionality and performance. You will leave this session knowing how and why column-level encryption, row-level security, and auditing are keys to securing your data.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 347-348

Copilot to the Rescue: Simplifying DBA Tasks in SSMS 22

Unlock faster, smarter database management with Github Copilot in SSMS 22. This session shows how AI-driven guidance simplifies everyday DBA tasks from faster troubleshooting, writing better T-SQL, boosting productivity and reducing errors.

In this session you will see practical demos and learn how Github Copilot becomes your essential assistant.

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 347-348

Designing a Real-World Recovery Strategy for SQL Server: From Theory to Survival

In many SQL Server environments it is assumed you are protected—until the moment you have to recover. Backups exist, availability features are enabled, yet when corruption, ransomware, or data loss strikes, teams discover that recovery plans are incomplete, untested, or misaligned with business expectations.

In this session, you will learn how to design a practical and defensible recovery strategy for SQL Server databases. We will translate RPO and RTO requirements into concrete technical decisions and walk through real-world failure scenarios that demand different recovery approaches. You will learn how to evaluate backup designs, validate restore readiness, and understand the role—and limitations—of high availability features in recovery planning.

This session is for DBAs who want confidence that their SQL Server platforms can survive real incidents, not just pass audits. You will leave with clear actions you can immediately apply to assess and strengthen your recovery strategy before it is tested under pressure.

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 337-339

The SQL Database You Know, The AI Skills You Need To Grow

You're comfortable in the world of SQL, but this new world of AI presents challenges - and opportunities. Microsoft calls SQL Server 2025 "the AI-ready enterprise database" but what does that mean for you and your company? What new features are there and which of them are already present in Azure SQL? What's hype? What's reality? Come see what you should be learning to keep up (or gain an edge).

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 345-346

Ledger DBs and Tables for the DBA & Data Professional

With all the hype around blockchain, why should a DBA or other data professional care? In this session, we will cover the basics of blockchain as it applies to data and database processes:

• Immutability
• Verification
• Trust
• Ledger Tables
• Ledger Databases
• Confidential Computing and Storage

We will look at current offerings for blockchain features in Azure SQL DB/SQL Server. Finally, we'll help you identify the types of business requirements that need blockchain technologies.

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 337-339

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: Revitalizing a SQL Server Code Base One Version at a Time

Data assets at organizations tend to stick around for a while--many of the databases we work with are old enough to vote. These databases tend to be full of code and patterns which made sense in SQL Server 2005 but are not the best approach today. In this session, we will walk through what has changed in the T-SQL landscape over the past several versions of SQL Server, providing practical tips on how to improve an existing code base without installing new SQL Server components. Just because that database is old doesn't mean it has to look that way.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 347-348

Building Generative AI models with SQL Server 2025

SQL Server 2025 adds native vector storage to build generative models with your data using the AI model of your choice without data migration. See how you can incorporate the native vector architecture and use the new T-SQL AI syntax to build practical, production-ready solutions. Attendees will learn how to specify where the model is stored and other details to be able to implement this solution.

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room 345-346

What's New In SQL Server For The Developer

This session examines the evolution of SQL Server from 2012 to 2025, with a focus on features that enable developers to write more efficient, secure, and maintainable code. Through practical demonstrations and real-world examples, attendees will learn how to leverage modern capabilities, including JSON support, temporal tables, dynamic data masking, row-level security, in-memory OLTP, and advanced string and date functions. The session also covers performance tuning tools, encryption strategies, and expanded cross-platform support, providing a comprehensive guide for developers seeking to optimize SQL Server’s performance in modern applications.

Prerequisites

Basic understanding of T-SQL

Familiarity with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

Experience working with SQL Server 2012 or later

Session Goals

Explore time-saving developer functions introduced in SQL Server versions 2012–2025.

Understand new security, paging, and in-memory features that enhance application performance and protection.

Learn about expanded operating system and platform support, including Linux and containerization.

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room 347-348

Backups Lie: Learning SQL Server Recovery Before It’s Too Late

Backups are only valuable if you know how to recover. This beginner‑friendly session focuses on the fundamentals of SQL Server recovery—what happens when things go wrong and how to get your data back with confidence. We’ll cover core backup types, what they actually enable during recovery, and the common gaps that leave teams unable to restore when it matters most. You’ll see how recovery differs across SQL Server running on‑premises, in virtual machines, and in Azure, including how IaaS approaches compare to Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance. Through simple demos and real‑world scenarios, you’ll learn how restores really work and how to choose the right recovery strategy before an outage forces the decision.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 345-346

Azure SQL Hyperscale: The Cloud Database for the Era of AI

Azure SQL Hyperscale is often viewed as a niche option for very large or expensive databases. In reality, Hyperscale represents the modern evolution of SQL Server, removing long‑standing limits around scale, performance, and operations while remaining fully SQL compatible. This session explains how Hyperscale’s architecture changes cost and scalability assumptions, dispels common myths, and shows why Hyperscale is the default SQL cloud database for modern applications. We’ll also look at new SQL capabilities—vectors, JSON, REST APIs, and AI agent integration using SQL MCP—without giving up SQL Server fundamentals.

Hyperscale isn’t a premium tier for edge cases—it’s how SQL Server evolves for cloud scale, cost efficiency, and AI‑ready applications.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 347-348

PowerShell 101: Unlocking the Basics of Cmdlets, Parameters, and Pipelines

Step into the world of PowerShell and discover how this powerful scripting language can simplify your day-to-day tasks. In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll break down the foundational concepts of PowerShell, focusing on the core building blocks: cmdlets, parameters, and pipelines.

You’ll learn how to harness cmdlets to perform common tasks, effectively use parameters to customize your commands, and combine them with pipelines to create streamlined workflows. Through live demonstrations and practical examples, this session will equip you with the knowledge to start leveraging PowerShell in your work right away.

No prior scripting experience? No problem! This session is designed to take you from zero to confident beginner. Join us to unlock the potential of PowerShell and take the first step toward mastering this essential tool!

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 320-321

Consolidate to Scale: Why Hyperscale Wins for Modern App

Modern application architectures have drifted toward polyglot persistence, adding complexity, data movement, and operational overhead. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale takes a different approach: a single, multi model system that brings relational, transactional, and emerging workloads together within SQL. Learn how Hyperscale redefines performance, elasticity, and operations. See why consolidating on a single, multi-model SQL platform is the simpler, more scalable path for modern applications

Friday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 347-348

SQL Joins Explained with Legos

For data professionals learning the SQL language, JOINs can be difficult to understand and master. Yet without this ability, analysts will find themselves limited to single table queries.

In this session, we'll explain and demonstrate how joins work and the many types using Legos. We'll provide guidelines on which joins to use when, and tips on defining predicates to improve performance. By the end of this session, you'll have the skills to join one-to-many tables in any query you need to write.