You might not realize it, but SolidQ will be ten years old in 2012 In May 2002, a handful of old friends had dinner at a restaurant in Palm Springs and decided to create this unique company. It might have been the wine I chose for that dinner (Muga), or it might be the stars shining over our heads that night, but we knew that we were onto something really unique. Almost ten years have passed since then, and there have been many changes in our organization, and in the IT market. During this time, we have worked with hundreds of customers around the world, have collaborated with Microsoft Corporation and its international subsidiaries in the launch of several versions of SQL Server, written many articles and books, spoken at many conferences and technical meetings, and taught hundreds of classes, to thousands of professionals, in many different countries. To mark our tenth anniversary, we are committed to even further improvements in our team, our services, and our ability to serve our customers in ways they could not even have conceived of. We have already spent several months designing different activities to commemorate this important anniversary, and we want to make sure that our customers are the first ones to benefit from the improvements we are going to implement during 2012. We will be unveiling these plans as the year progresses, and we will use the SolidQ Journal as the main mechanism for presenting these exciting plans during the course of our anniversary year. As part of this strategy, it gives me great pleasure to announce the SolidQ Forum 2012, which will take place in the Dominican Republic, from the 5th to the 7th of December 2012. We selected the Caribbean for this conference because we want to make it the most special technical conference we have ever had, as the final celebration of our tenth anniversary. The fees for the conference have not been set yet, but they will include full board and accommodation at the conference resort, giving you the opportunity to relax and fully enjoy this unique event. Just three days of in-depth and highly relevant technical content, roundtable discussions, customer experiences, and lots of fun, will provide a unique networking experience with the top professionals in the SQL Server world. We are securing the participation of key members of the SQL Server development team, the Microsoft Customer Advisory Team, SolidQ authors and mentors, as well as selected customers willing to share their experiences with all of us. A unique conference, with a unique ratio of attendees per speaker, maximizing the opportunities to meet, talk, interact, share, and celebrate together. A place to learn, share experiences, and build up relationships that will last for many years. No marketing sessions, no introductory sessions, no junior speakers, just highly charged action-orientated sessions in which we will help you improve your database systems, by using real proven techniques already implemented in advanced database systems around the world. Since Microsoft will launch SQL Server 2012 in a few months, the SolidQ Forum 2012 will give us the chance of reviewing the lessons learned from the first systems upgraded to SQL 2012 around the world. However, the SolidQ Forum will not be exclusively about this new version of SQL Server. We will need to talk about other versions and editions as they become - and stay - relevant to the industry, such as the new database appliances, Azure, Hadoop and many other technologies in the Microsoft Data Platform. This conference is not merely a replacement for the well-known technical conferences around SQL Server. It is a special event for those who want to know more, well beyond what they could get from a typical training event.
We want it to be unique and select, so we will all have quality time to enjoy being together, sharing common interests. This means that places will be very limited. The sooner you book, the better, in order to avoid disappointment. Keep tuned for the opening of the registration page at www.solidq.com This issue of the Journal also has a new format, all in HTML, for improved performance and searchability. We are planning more flexible release dates for the articles in the Journal, rather than just monthly or bi-monthly, thus providing you with this rich technical content as soon as possible, shortening the delay between the time the author writes the original article to the time the final reviewed and edited version is published. Registration on our web is no longer a requirement if you wish to read new articles as they get published. However, we will require registration for premium content in some specific cases, where this makes sense. Having said that, I’d still like to encourage you to register on our web so that you will receive up-to-the-minute information about the publication of new articles in the Journal, as well as any news about the SolidQ Forum 2012. I wish you all a great 2012 Fernando G. Guerrero