The day started with Paul Flessner’s Keynote, where he introduced his successor, Ted Kummert. There was also a demo of DB mirroring that bombed miserably. Still not sure I like that feature in its current state.

The sessions were great today. I saw Joy Mundy give a session on SSIS ETL for Fact Tables and source extraction. This was awesome. It dug deeper even than her book.

I also Allen White present on SMO for automation of daily administration. This was interesting to me as I research RMO to replace the debacle that is Replication Monitor 2005. Allen is a great guy, whom I’ve enjoyed connecting with through SQLJunkies and here at the conference. If you are looking for him at PASS, look for the guy that looks like Bill Gates. For those Buckeye Fans staying in Seattle during the game on Saturday, Allen says the Alumni Association is watching the game at a bar near the Space Needle.

Later in the afternoon I saw sessions on improving performance of SSAS and some methodologies (ADAPT and SPINE) for modeling multi-dimensional databases (Dan Bulos). These were great. I spend a lot of time ER Modeling, now I can do the same in the MD space.

Later in the evening was the exhibitor session. Quest is giving away shirts and pins. If you wear their T-shirt, you could win $1000. I thought about wearing the shirt today, but its blue, and well, being a Buckeye fan, I just can’t do it this week. Sorry Mike Walsh!

I also got to meet Adam Machanic face-to-face. We’ve emailed and responded to each other’s blogs, but finally I can put a face with the name. Nice to meet you Adam!

After the exhibit was the PASS volunteer night at Gameworks. I was really tired and everyone else in the room seemed to be, too. I didn’t stay long, but it looked like a good time. Thanks to PASS for recognizing volunteers. This continues to be a first rate organization.