Top 10 Things I Learned Thursday at SQL Pass Summit

Sorry for the delay in posting this last Top 10 list of things I learned at the SQL PASS Summit in Seattle. Here is the final list:

10. The Paramount Hotel is probably where I need to stay next year if I get to come back.
9. A data mart/data warehouse solution would answer a lot of the temporal reporting challenges I have been unable to solve with straight T-SQL against the OLTP database.
8. The query execution process turns out to have three layers: the visible "typed" layer, the logical layer, and the physcial layer. I was only aware of the first two before.
7. Query optimization is more arcane and difficult than I would have ever thought (not that I ever thought about it).
6. The "shared data sources" and "mini-charts" in Reporting Services 2008 R2 will be a great help for self-service reporting.
5. The T-SQL function APPLY allows the query to apply a calculated table column or function to every row of the "left" table.  Believe me, it is much more useful than it sounds.
4. "ETL" means "extract, transform, and load."
3. I need to learn how to use the ETL functions in SQL Server Integration Services.
2. A "fact table" is a table comprised of measureable (i.e. usually numeric) "facts" along with a set of keys to to the facts to "dimension tables" comprised of descriptive (i.e. usually non-numeric) "dimensions."  Together these two tables form a "star schema," the fundamental structure of data marts and data warehouses.
1. I need to learn how to create a data mart for the Shelby v.5 OLTP database.

As a result of SQL PASS Summit 2010, you will be reading a lot more about PowerPivot, data marts, OLAP cubes, and more. I certainly have enough to learn to keep me busy until next year's Summit!