Over the past several months, I've talked about SQL Server conferences (SQL Server Conferences to Watch for This Fall), the large amount of SQL Server information available (Too Much SQL Server 2008 Information?), and community (Defining the SQL Server Community). Today, I'll combine these topics and talk about the effect of too much information at a community conference.

Last week, when discussing community, I mentioned how excited I had been to see a conference dedicated solely to SQL Server. The PASS Community Summit, which is taking place in Seattle this week, has been held in the United States for the past 10 years. (I only realized as I was writing this commentary that this year is the 10th year that the PASS Community Summit has been held, but I can't find any mention of this auspicious anniversary on the PASS website. Maybe they'll make a big deal of it next year, when the 11th PASS Community Summit will take place 10 years after PASS was started.) In 1999, PASS offered about 70 sessions, with no full-day preconference seminars, and a couple hundred people attended it. This year, there are more than 150 sessions, two full days of pre-conference seminars with seven seminars to choose from each day, and more than 3000 people in attendance. What a change! But is all that change a good thing?

Are you going to migrate to SQL Server 2008?

Go to the SQL Server Magazine home page (www.sqlmag.com) and submit your vote for:

• We've already migrated to SQL Server 2008
• We plan to migrate to SQL Server 2008 in six months
• We plan to migrate to SQL Server 2008 in a year or so
• We’ll probably migrate to SQL Server 2008, but it’s going to be awhile
• We're sticking with what we got

SQL Server Magazine editor Sheila Molnar talks to SQL Server industry experts about green computing with SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Server Services, Visual Studio 2010 and Azure, and more topics. See the full list of audiocasts and videos from the Fall 2008 Connections Conferences at ittv.net!

SQL Assistant 4.0 is now available from SoftTree Technologies. This version of the product improves both code quality and code accuracy by providing developers with SQL programming productivity tools.
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Integrate MySQL and SQL Server
by Robert Sheldon
Need to retrieve MySQL data and insert it into a SQL Server database? SQL Server Integration Services and MySQL connectors let you do so fairly easily.
www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/100114/sql_server_100114.html

Quickly Find Your Worst-Performing T-SQL Statements
by Greg A. Larsen
Here's a stored procedure that lets you quickly and easily produce customized reports showing the poorest-performing T-SQL statements that were run against your SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 databases.
www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/100201/sql_server_100201.html

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Change Management & Compliance | Seminars on your Schedule
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