SQLAuthority News – MVP Summit 2009 – Database Industry Discussion – Live From London Airport and Sheraton Seattle

Today my trip turned into a database industry discussion at the airport itself. I announced my tour in SQLAuthority News – Author Visit – MVP Global Summit 2009 – Seattle and Redmond.

I met my friend and fellow MVP Suprotim Agarwal at Mumbai Airport by accident. We traveled to Seattle together on the same flights. Suprotim is a wonderful person to meet and a top-notch tech geek of India. We share the same love for technology.

We discussed many tech topics on the way to Seattle. I’ll write in-depth reviews of them when I’m back in my town. Here are the top five points.

1. Database requirement gathering is important, but it’s usually neglected or looked at only from the application’s point of view.
2. Database design and architecture should be done by SQL experts. In many places, software or application developers do it, and that can lead to disaster later.
3. Capacity planning is an important topic that even many expert DBAs avoid discussing. Soon I plan to write a detailed query for it.
4. People talk a lot about SQL injection and application security. SQL Server itself has great auditing and policy management features, and we should explore them more.
5. Database benchmarking is usually done after the application is live. In an ideal world, we’d set benchmarks before design starts and measure them after the application is complete. Then it’s clear whether the benchmarks were met.

We discussed many other points besides these five. I’ll write about them in detail afterward. I’d also like to hear your opinions on these five topics in the comments.

After nearly 35 hours of travel (the actual flying time was about 22 hours), I reached the Sheraton in Seattle. I met a couple of cool and famous Indian MVPs there. Five of us walked down the road and had a lot of fun.

Even the fun talk ended in technical discussion. We talked about how a fast-food order queue can be optimized, and why waiters serve food asynchronously. I feel fortunate to meet some of the smartest people on earth a day before the summit. We connected well.

To the MVPs and readers who emailed about meeting at the summit: I’ve already replied. If you’re still interested, let me know and we’ll work something out. I want to connect with my readers and fellow MVPs while I’m in Seattle.

Here’s my travel itinerary so far:

• Feb 27, 2009: Departing Ahmedabad to Mumbai
• Feb 28, 2009: Departing Mumbai to Seattle Sheraton Hotel
• March 1, 2009: Day 1 at MVP Summit
• March 2, 2009: Day 2 at MVP Summit
• March 3, 2009: Day 3 at MVP Summit
• March 4, 2009: Day 4 at MVP Summit
• March 5, 2009: Departing Seattle to Toronto
• March 6, 2009: Tech User Group Meeting, Markham, Canada
• March 7, 2009: Departing Toronto to Mumbai
• March 8, 2009: Missing day due to crossing the International Date Line
• March 9, 2009: Arriving in Ahmedabad

More from MVP Summit 2009

• Announcement: MVP Global Summit 2009 in Seattle and Redmond
• The journey begins
• Database industry discussion from London Airport to Sheraton Seattle (this post)
• Day 0: About Pinal Dave
• Day 1: Summit welcome and keynotes
• Day 2: Most contributing MVP of the year
• Day 3: Party day and SQL celebrity photos
• Day 4: Keynote of Steve Ballmer
• South Asian MVPs at Global MVP Summit 2009
• Complete wrapup of the Microsoft MVP Summit 2009 trip
• Video interview published online

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.