It was early morning on Saturday, October 24th when some of my friends and I piled into my Jeep, with coffee in hand, for an enjoyable road trip from Indy to the Louisville SQL Saturday event. Enroute we all enjoyed great conversations ranging from the pros and cons of virtualization to the upcoming Colts football game.

Upon arrival we signed in and began our day of learning and fellowship. There were two tracks available for the SQL hungry: The Database Administration track and the Business Intelligence track. With a fresh cup of Joe in my hand I proceeded to attend the Database Administration track. The following sessions were the ones that I attended:

- Demystifying Transact-SQL by Jason Follas
This session was a very good "back to the basics" session on T-SQL. It is always good to revisit the basics no matter how advanced you are in any discipline. Coverage of UNION/UNION ALL would have been a valuable addition to the presentation; but time was certainly a restriction.

- The XML Capabilities of SQL Server 2008 by Jason Follas
This session was also very good. It covered the XML data type and the functionality that is available in using this data type. It was good to hear more details about this powerful feature.

- Comparing Clustering Methods by Alex Prusakov
This session was presented at IndyPASS back in March, 2009. While the March presentation was very good I felt that this version was even more interesting. This presentation solidified my understanding of clustering and how I may approach this need in my own environment.

- SQL Server Consolidation and Virtualization by Sarah Barela and Ryan Jones
This session was a perfect follow-up to the topic presented by Alex. The tag team approach to the presentation was an interesting approach. At the end I was not sure that I had much to take with me and apply to my world; but there was some good questions presented by the audience.

- Powershell in SQL Server 2008 by Arie Jones
This session was presented at IndyPASS back in November, 2008. This session was fast paced. The power of this feature was successfully demonstrated. The challenge with this feature is that it requires some hands-on to fully grasp its scope. Arie's energy kept the audience going as the day was heading for a close.

In addition to attending the above sessions I engaged into some great discussions with the event organizer and Louisville PASS Chapter leader, Malathi Mahadevan. She successfully organized a quality event. One in which many in attendance look forward to a sequel in the near future. I am also very pleased to see the SQL Saturday events begin to be popping-up in the mid-west.