Last night was the monthly meeting of Greenville’s SQL Server Innovators Guild. It’s a first Tuesday of the month meeting that, like all such meetings, sometimes bores you, sometimes teaches you something new and sometimes….sometimes pumps you up with purpose.

Last night’s speakers were excellent and both challenged me in different ways.

Ken McClaren went through how he upgraded a SQL instance from 2005 to 2008 and outlined the difficulties he faced along the way. I know that I will be faced with the same upgrade in the months to come, so having this well drawn out and documented talk has given me insight into what I’m going to have to do to make that transition smooth and painless for my company.

I came into work this morning already planning on how I will set up a test environment and get my instance upgraded in that, all the while noting all my “gotchas” and documenting what I will need to do with the production server. I know that it will probably take me months to complete the testing since this is a “one man show”, but now that doesn’t discourage me as it would have before listening to Ken.

Brian Kelley was the second speaker of the night and his topic was SQL Security. This is an area that I am sadly lacking in. I won’t detail what I have not done for my company in this regard (don’t want to tempt anybody), but Brian’s talk last night resolved in me a purpose to correct my lacking ways.

Although Brian’s job requires much tighter security than my company needs, his talk showed how to communicate with your supervisors to best emphasize the importance of good security measures. After all, you don’t want your credit manager taking trips to the Outer Banks on company funds

I’m eagerly looking forward to other meetings of SSIG if this is any indication of the quality and style of this year’s presenters. As always, credit for organizing and arranging speakers goes to Paul Waters, the unofficial President of SSIG. I wish I had half the energy of this young man! He is dedicated and passionate about Microsoft SQL Server and Business Intelligence and brings to Greenville a strong talent for organization and motivation.

His parting request to those of us who attended last night’s meeting was for others to volunteer to give programs.

Maybe even I can give a talk on something….

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