SQLSaturday #41 - Atlanta Session Recap

Last Saturday, April 24, I presented my session, Why I Use Stored Procedures and You Should Too, at SQLSaturday #41-Atlanta, see my event summary here.  My session was in the last block of the day, which at this event was at 4:45PM, so it was a long day for attendees, thus I was very happy to have 20 attendees in my session.  At the end of the day, especiallyafter attending 6 other sessions, it can be hard to hang around for that extra hour, so I appreciate everyone who toughed it out.

I started out by encouraging the attendees to become involved in their local user group, about 50% said that they had attended a user group at least 4 times in the last year, and in PASS. 

In this session I give the reasons I believe that stored procedures are the best way to access data in SQL Server and I encourage discussion of other access methods (Linq to SQL, Entity Framework, nHibernate, etc...).  I have 3 main points that I cover:

1. Security
2. Maintenance
3. Performance

I finish the session, as time allows, by demonstrating different methods of data access in a .NET application.  I show the difference between Linq to SQL, Entity Framework, and the various ADO.NET methods (string concatenation, SQL Command using parameters, and Stored Procedure calls).  I also run Profiler to show the SQL generated by the tools, and the impact on the procedure cache.  Prior to .NET 4.0 both Linq to SQL and Entity Framework could cause cache bloat/pollution when using string parameters, but this has been improved in .NET 4.0.

I had some good interaction, but, as you would expect at a SQL Server event, it was hard to find a proponent of ORM tools so I had a friendly crowd.  Prior to my session I had a good discussion with Chris Eargle (@KodeFuGuru) who does a presentation on RESTful Data that uses an ORM layer for data access.  He was in a tough spot in the speaker room with multiple DBA's present, but was a good discussion.  I need more of that.

Based on the speaker/session evaluation I did a good job in communicating what the session was and covered the material as expected.  Here are the numbers (I had 2 blank evals):

Expectations:

• Did Not Meet - 0
• Met - 10
• Exceeded - 8

Overall quality of presentation (1-5 with 5 being the best):

• 1 - 0
• 2 - 0
• 3 - 1
• 4 - 8
• 5 - 9

There were no comments on the evals, but I'd like to know why I someone rated the presentation at 3, but overall I have to be pleased that I graded out above average, well based on these numbers.

I always enjoy attending these events and presenting just adds to the enjoyment.  Thanks again to Stuart (@StuartA) and  crew for putting on a great event.