I am looking forward to being both a speaker and an attendee at this year’s SQL Saturday in Atlanta (it is number 521… wow). Don’t know what SQL Saturday is? (I doubt that if you are reading this blog, but if so, click here quickly my friend).

My topic this year is concurrency:

Let Me Finish… Isolating Write Operations

OLTP databases can be constantly written to and reporting databases are written to at least periodically. In order to ensure consistent results, connections must be isolated from one another while executing, ideally with the lowest possible cost to concurrency.  How this isolation is handled is based on the isolation level, whether the classic lock based or the newer optimistic scheme of the in-memory OLTP engine is used, or even if both engines are enlisted in the same transaction. In this session we will look at examples of how SQL Server isolates reading and writing operations from other writing operations to explore how this may affect your application through error messages and performance hits.

But beyond getting to teach about SQL for an hour, I look forward to a few things even more:

1. Seeing so many friends – Many I don’t even know their names, just their avatars on twitter. Many I have known for years from SQL events. And even my cousin’s husband will be in attendance so I get to see them as well. So much time to hang out with friends from dinners, lunches, between sessions, etc.

2. Sessions! – I personally go to these events to fill in gaps in my knowledge (and sometimes reinforcing my knowledge helps too!) Sessions like: Efficient Table Design by Alex Grinberg, Building Blocks of Cortana Intelligence Suite in Azure by Melissa Coates, Indexes from the Ground Level by Lindsay Clark, and definitely Vote or Die 2016: Which is Faster by Robert Verell (I saw it the first time, so I know the answers!).  And there is a Women In Tech lunch with Rie Irish that will definitely be interesting as well.  Of course, even if I say I am going to these sessions, if I make it to one or two it will be amazing. Too often I am distracted by some other session and end up learning something completely different.

Will I see you there? (If not, maybe I will see you in Pensacola a few weeks later?)