Jeremiah Peschka's session Rewrite Your T-SQL for Great Good ! kept me in stitches. His statement “We need standards like a Lego whale needs a bicycle” still cracks me up. I wanna use that line myself, only it probably won't be as effective without the photo that Jeremiah used in his slides. I'm still scratching my head about his suggestion that code should be tested in Production, though. I wish he'd included a methodology for this. Of course, I may have misunderstood him completely...

Only Rob Farley's session Joins, SARGability and the Evils of Residualiciousness rivaled Jeremiah's in terms of entertainment value. And this had nothing to do with the fact that Rob was wearing a kilt. Rob is just a funny guy. I'm half-disappointed he didn't pull out the guitar during his talk, though. We all could have broken out in song and it would have come as great relief after thinking so many deep thoughts.

Itzik Ben-Gan's pre-con Advanced T-SQL for SQL Server 2008 and Denali was a must. Loved how he typed out his code during his demo so we could see how he thinks. I figure that's the closest thing to getting inside that man's brain. My brain can think like that, too. I'm sure of it. I just need to be patient. (I'm still waiting...)

I was long overdue for Ami Levin's talk on physical join operators. His use of playing cards to demonstrate how the query engine performs joins was brilliant. I think now I'll write better code.

It was a hoot to see Erik Veerman in the flesh at his session Anger Management: Overcoming SSIS Deployment and Configuration Challenges. He's on the cover of the big, fat SSIS book that's been sitting on my desk at work for the past year. He looks just as good in real life.

These are just a few of the highlights. All the speakers were good. But, most importantly, two good things came out of PASS...

I've started a Lunch 'n Learn where I work so that I can share what I've learned at PASS with my colleagues. Although I'm not a big presenter, I'm excited about the new 'tricks' I've learned. I even want to share the esoteric stuff that went over my head, like workspace memory and resource semaphore queues, because if someone else “gets it” it's a win-win. I'm hoping my enthusiasm for SQL Server is contagious. Maybe some of the team will even get to go next year.

The second good thing that came out of PASS is that I attended #passprayers for the first time. Shocking that I got up at 5:00 am to meet for prayers at 6:00. I'm not a morning person ! But I did. And I'm glad.

Many thanks to @Mike_Walsh for starting this group. Not a regular church-goer myself, (as I confessed at the gathering, I'm a bad Catholic!) I nonetheless found myself looking forward to meeting up each morning more and more. I really can't explain how powerful it was to worship together, but I can say that I continue to be inspired by my fellow PASS attendees' faith.

I learned a lot of things at PASS. But the most important thing I learned is that PASS stands for PASSion, - for the technology we love...and for the One who makes it all possible.

Let me back up a bit.  Last summer, I took a week-long course on SSAS 2008 through Global Knowledge and it was great.  Although expensive, devoting a whole week to learning a completely new subject was a real treat.  The instructor mentioned the 70-448 exam and I thought, why not take it ?

To prepare for the exam, I picked up Microsoft’s Training Kit at the instructor’s recommendation.  Although getting through it at times was as torturous as some of the Pilates moves I subject myself to on a Saturday morning, I would recommend it.  Regardless of my test results, the book and practice tests that come with it have helped me better understand many key concepts.  Take the different storage modes for SSAS:  MOLAP, HOLAP, ROLAP.  After my SSAS class, I had a general idea of what these terms meant, but it wasn’t until I came across the following questions on the practice exams that the differences among these modes became clear:  “Which storage method is the best for fast querying ?” (MOLAP), “Which storage method is best if you want to maximize space on the SSAS server, but still want aggregations stored in the cube ?” (HOLAP)

Now, about that material I hadn’t seen before…  One of the questions referenced an MDX statement (I won’t name it so I don’t get in trouble) that was never mentioned in the class I took, nor in the Training Kit.  Okay, okay, this statement is explained in the separate, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 MDX book I bought soon after I took the class (when I was really enthusiastic).  This book came in handy when I needed to create a custom calculation for a report that has a cube for a data source, but have I read the entire book ?  Of course not.  I’m afraid if I get lost in MDX, I’ll never find my way out !

For the Integration Services part of the exam, I didn’t take a class.  Yes, you guessed it, I bought another, big, fat, book – Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services by Wrox.  I haven’t read the whole thing, just picked out what I’ve needed here and there.  I’ve also learned a lot on the subject from my friend and mentor, Ted Krueger (Blog|Twitter) .  I’m definitely not an expert here, but I do know SSIS a whole lot better now than I did a year ago, and I actually like it.

As for the Reporting Services piece, I’ve been creating reports for a few years now, so that section should have been a breeze, right ?  Well, the exam covered a lot of configuration-type tasks that were new to me.  Actually, I’ve gotten Reporting Services to run just fine without knowing many of these features.  I did score best on this section, though.

I will retake the exam – after a whole lot more studying.  Now I know these certifications demonstrate not just knowledge, but mastery of a subject area.  And I’m not quite there, yet.