Edit: As I reread this, I felt I should clarify.. As usual refers mostly to the “Scary” part. I have a lot of stage fright that I have to work through. And it is always exciting to be picked.  

I have been selected this year at the PASS Summit 2012 to do two sessions, and they are both going to be interesting.

• Pre-Con: Relational Database Design Workshop – Abstract

• Triggers: Born Evil or Misunderstood? – Abstract

The pre-con session entitled Relational Database Design Workshop will be (at least) the third time I will have done this pre-con session, and I am pretty excited to take it to a bit larger scale. The one big change that I am forcing this time is a limit on the lecture time. Each of the first two times I have done this session the biggest disappointment has been that we didn’t get nearly enough time for the exercises. If people get tired of the exercises, I will certainly have a lot of extra material to do, but the focus will be on getting at least three hours of design time in. Some as a full group on the screen, and some broken up into groups. (Of course, we will adjust the schedule based on the size of the group and whatever they are throwing at me verbally… and physically! I will have material to pad out at least an hour if people start looking bored (or if the group members start screaming at each other…you know, like a real database design session would be like if people weren’t concerned with losing their jobs.))

The triggers session is the one that I have been mulling over for years now, and it is going to be minimally interesting, and probably a lot of fun (particularly if Hugo Kornelis (@Hugo_Kornelis) and Tom LaRock (@SQLRockstar) (Tom is not a fan of triggers! http://thomaslarock.com/2009/03/sql-database-triggers/) show up to offer their opinions). Triggers are probably the most controversial of SQL Server objects, and for good reason. There are server and database settings that affect how they work, and it is not trivial to write them in a manner that doesn’t harm performance. Worst yet, they can cause side effects that (if not performed correctly) really harm performance, data integrity, and the sanity of the developers who don’t realize they exist. But for all of the negatives, there are some tasks that just fit the trigger to a T. I might be trying to do too much in a 1:15 session, but it would not be the first time!

So I hope to see a good number of you there, for the pre- con, and certainly for the Trigger session. Just leave the potential projectiles in your hotel room…