At the end of March I'll be journeying down with the family to Orlando, Florida. We plan on stopping in to see the Mouse, but while it's not all Disney, it is all pleasure! That's because I'll be speaking at SQL Connections as part of the SQLServerCentral.com track. I'm giving two talks.

The first talk is my bread and butter, security. Once you're in security, I don't think you can ever leave security. You may leave a security position, but you never leave security because what you know means you want to stay in the know. And that has pretty well described me over the last two years. Technically I stepped away from an infrastructure and security architect position to being a dedicated SQL Server DBA, but you can guess what, on every project and system, comes to mind first for me: security. So I'm really looking forward to giving a dedicated security presentation to a larger audience, though my focus is primarily on SQL Server.

The second talk is taking a look at Windows internals and how they affect SQL Server, especially on the performance side. What I have found in giving the security talks is that it is very easy to concentrate on the SQL Server side and kind of forget about the operating system, treating it as a black box. In some shops, there is no choice. That's the way it is. But I think a good SQL Server DBA should have a pretty good understanding of how the operating system works and how it interacts with SQL Server. This is the key to understanding and troubleshooting some issues that crop up. Again, this is another talk I'm really excited about.

So if you can, ask, beg, and plead with your boss to let you go to SQL Connections. There's a great lineup of speakers. I'm probably the most insignificant one on the list and feel privileged to get to go. So I'm looking forward to attending sessions possibly more than giving two of my own.