I will be a speaker at PASS Summit 2010 (November 8-11, 2010 – Seattle, WA) and sessions have been published yesterday. I am currently writing the last chapter of the book about PowerPivot that will be available in September, so I’m confident it will be on the shelf of bookshop at the conference!

Below there are my sessions – the one about PowerPivot is really a chapter of the book. It is a session mostly about DAX and only in part about Data Modeling (Alberto has a session that is specific about advanced data modeling in PowerPivot). Then I also have a spotlight session (90 minutes) about monitoring (and tuning) SSAS – these topics are extracted from one chapter of our book about SSAS written with Alberto and Chris last year. It is good content also for SSAS 2008 R2, so if you still haven’t read the book, don’t miss this session too!

See you in Seattle!

Common Patterns in PowerPivot
Session Type: Regular session
Track: BI Client Reporting and Delivery Topics
Speaker(s): Marco Russo

This session will show how to solve many common business problems in PowerPivot by using DAX. You will see a wide set of calculation patterns, which are immediately usable. Starting from simply contribution percentages, there will be a show of more advanced calculations, like ABC classification (Pareto), ranking, time-driven comparison and aggregations, distinct count measures, many-to-many relationships and much else.

Monitoring Cube Performance and Usage
Session Type: Spotlight
Track: BI Architecture, Development and Administration Topics
Speaker(s): Marco Russo

To detect possible performance and service level issues with Analysis Services (SSAS), it is important to understand how it interacts with the operating system. In fact, resources consumed by Analysis Services are controlled by the operating system and this session will show what counters to monitor (and how to do it) for getting memory, CPU and I/O consumption made by SSAS. Then, there will be a description of specific tools like SQL Server Profiler, ASTrace, Activity Viewer and MDX Studio, which will be used both alone and integrated with operating system counters. This session content is based on a chapter of the book Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services, written by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb.