SQL Authority News – Advanced T-SQL with Itzik Ben-Gan – Solid Quality Mentors

As mentioned earlier in a blog post SQL SERVER – Advanced T-SQL with Itzik Ben-Gan – A Dream Coming True, I got the wonderful opportunity to attend the course of Itzik Ben-Gan. Itzik is one of the true masters of SQL Server, and his fame had set my expectations quite high. The most interesting aspect is that I have taught a similar course in India several times, and I was quite familiar with all the slides and examples. As I already knew a lot about this course, I was wondering if I would be able to enjoy the class or learn something new. The reality is I learned alot of new things.

Overall, this class delivers quality training way more than what we expect. Learning the course from Itzik is a great experience. In the last five days, I have learned several new things. In fact, I felt that if I attend the class again, I can for surely learn more. Itzik suggested so many useful tips, which really impressed me.

Let me list a few of those tips here:

• When TOP is used along with 100% and ORDER BY clause in table expressions (view, CTE), the ORDER BY clause is ignored.
• For only two tables, both JOIN and SubQuery can be the optimal solution.
• You can use TOP to gradually delete a table with millions of rows.
• Understanding the instances when Index Scan is faster to retrieve data than Index Seek.
• Power up analysis of data without using analysis service and grouping set features.
• Trivial plan does not look for index selectivity.

This class was on Advanced T-SQL Server 2008, and it was faithful to the concept. Itzik has a very interesting way of delivering the sessions. His course and sessions are perfectly managed, and the learning topics are very well paced. All the sessions are perfectly timed and very interesting. All the sessions are followed up with exercise and lab. Itzik takes a good amount of time to explain the Hands on lab, which is very helpful.

There are 10 different advance T-SQL sessions, and they are covered very well. I enjoyed each session and learned a lot of new concepts. Few things are difficult to put in writing, and Itzik has effectively discussed many concepts like that.

To top these, all the attendees were given two different books written by Itzik for FREE!

I think this five-day training was one of the best training sessions I have ever had in this subject. A large number of concepts were covered in this training. If I get a chance to attend this course again, I will surely not miss it as I do not want to let go of the opportunity to learn from Itzik at any cost.

I express my special thanks to Itzik Ben-Gan for accepting my registration at the last moment even though the seats were full, as well as to Rushabh Mehta for making this happen for me.

During the class, Itzik invited me for dinner to Maggiano, an excellent place for Italian cuisines. Two other excellent Solid Quality Mentors also joined us for dinner – Greg Low and Peter Myers. I was extremely delighted to have these top-notch industry experts around me talking SQL. I consider myself fortunate to have dinner with them and to have spent Solid Quality time with them.

If you are in waiting list for the course and want to get into the class earlier than your schedule, please feel free to email me and I will help you as much as I can.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)