Chris Webb's BI Blog

I’m pleased to announce that a whole bunch of new dates for SSAS and MDX training courses in London, Manchester and Dublin are now up on the Technitrain site, along with several other SQL Server BI and engine courses from the likes of Jen Stirrup, Andy Leonard and Christian Bolton.

Here are the details:

Server Analysis Services 2012 Tabular Workshop with Marco Russo and Chris Webb 28 – 29 May, London
In association with SQL BI (http://www.ssasworkshop.com/)
If you want to learn about creating Tabular models with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2012, then this is the course for you. It covers all the content in the new Tabular book that Marco, Alberto and I have been working on and it goes into a lot more detail than the standard tutorials. I’m co-promoting this course in London with Marco and Alberto, and as detailed below I’ll be teaching it solo in Dublin in the autumn; it’s going to be run in several other European cities so take a look here for more details.
Cost – £850 (exc VAT)

Data Visualisation with SQL Server 2012 Tabular Models, Excel and Power View with Jen Stirrup 30 May 2012, London
A one day course aimed at BI professionals who use Excel and Power View and want to learn how to create effective data visualisations. Jen is the acknowledged expert in the field of data visualisation for Microsoft BI, and this course is immediately after the SSAS 2012 Tabular course – so why not attend both?
Cost: – £299 (exc VAT)

Real World Cube Design and Performance Tuning with Analysis Services Multidimensional with Chris Webb 3-5 July 2012, Manchester
A three day course aimed at intermediate-to-experienced Analysis Services Multidimensional developers, looking at more advanced cube design topics and query performance tuning. I’ll be speaking at the Manchester and Leeds SQL Server user groups in the evenings while I’m up in there too.
Cost: – £749 (exc VAT)

Upgrade your SQL Server Integration Services skills to 2012 with Andy Leonard 12-14 September 2012, London
An introduction to the new features in SSIS 2012 for SQL Server Integration Services professionals. Andy’s last course for us went down very well indeed – take a look at this review of it!
Cost – £749 (exc VAT)

Server Analysis Services 2012 Tabular Workshop with Chris Webb  19 -20 September 2012, Dublin
This is the same course as the one listed above in London in May.
Cost – €950 

Data Visualisation with SQL Server 2012 Tabular Models, Excel and Power View with Jen Stirrup  21 September 2012, Dublin
Once again, this is the same course as the one listed above in London in May.
Cost – €335

Advanced Internals and Troubleshooting Workshop for SQL Server with Christian Bolton 9 – 10 October 2012, London
The Advanced Troubleshooting Workshop for SQL Server 2005, 2008, R2 and 2012 provides attendees with SQL Server relational engine internals knowledge, practical troubleshooting skills and a proven methodical approach to problem solving. The workshop will enable attendees to tackle complex SQL Server problems with confidence.
Cost – £990 (exc VAT) 

Introduction To MDX, with Chris Webb – 5-7 December 2012, London
A three day course designed for those with little or no experience of MDX, by the end of this course, you will be able to write MDX queries and calculations for Analysis Services with confidence.
Cost:- £749 (exc VAT)

After all the activity last year, you may have been wondering what’s happened with the SSAS Maestro Program – the premier certification for Analysis Services professionals (for some more background information see here). Well, wonder no more: my fellow SSAS Maestro Marco Russo and I will be running the course again in Milan this summer on the 9th-13th July.

There are a few things that are going to be different with this run of the course which I need to point out:

• It’s no longer invitation-only so anyone can apply to attend. However we’ll only have 20 spaces in the training room and this, plus the fact that this is a very demanding course, means we’ll only be accepting people who have a lot of previous SSAS experience.
• It’s no longer free either. The cost will be €7000 plus taxes for five days of training plus the exam/coursework/labs, although people who have previously attended the Maestros course will only have to pay €5000 plus taxes. That’s fairly expensive I know, but there’s a lot of work involved in organising a one-off course like this, a lot of marking to be done afterwards and there are also a lot of overheads as well as two trainers to pay.
• The marking process will be a lot faster this time!

If you’re interested in attending please send Marco and me an email at ssasmaestro@sqlbi.com, along with a copy of your CV/resume and a few paragraphs detailing your level of SSAS knowledge. We’ll be opening registrations in mid-April and we’ll be able to let you know whether you’ve been accepted then.

Over the last few years I’ve been doing more and more training – my MDX, SSAS cube design and performance tuning courses continue to be extremely popular – and I’ve also seen how successful preconference seminars at conferences like SQLBits have become. It’s my opinion that there’s significant demand for SQL Server training that is either at a more advanced level than the big training companies can offer, or that covers niche topics that the big training companies would never bother with such as MDX. Equally, I believe that more experienced developers would rather be taught by people like them, who have used a technology in the field, written books and blog posts, and have real-world knowledge, rather than professional trainers who (by definition) spend most of their time training.

That’s why I have decided to launch a new training company to offer expert-level SQL Server training in the UK: Technitrain. Not only will I be running all my public training courses through it, but I’ll also be offering training courses by other respected SQL Server MVPs, authors, bloggers and speakers. Here’s my initial course schedule:

Advanced SQL Server Internals and Troubleshooting, with Christian Bolton. 6th-7th December 2011

Introduction to Master Data Services, with Jeremy Kashel. 17th February 2012

Real World Analysis Services Cube Design and Performance Tuning, with Chris Webb. 9th-10th February 2012

From Zero to SSIS, with Andy Leonard. 5th-9th March 2012

Introduction to MDX, with Chris Webb. 21st-23rd March 2012

I’m really excited to be working with the likes of Christian, Jeremy and Andy for this first group of courses – they really are the acknowledged experts in their particular areas. All the courses will be run in central London, so they will not only be convenient for anyone in the UK but also easily accessible for attendees from Europe or further away.

Finally, I’d like your help in making my new company a success. But don’t worry, I’m going to pay you for it! If you run a user group, a small consultancy, a training company or are a contractor or a blogger, you may be interested in my affiliate programme. You can find more details on the site, but basically I will pay 20% of the price of the course for each registration that an affiliate sends my way. For example, for Andy Leonard’s SSIS course that means I’ll pay £399 per registration in commission – which hopefully is enough motivation for you to mention these courses to your friends, colleagues, customers, blog readers, Twitter followers and so on.