My upcoming presentations for spring/summer 2017: some on CF, some on other topics

Note: This blog post is from 2017. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I'm going to be speaking several times in the coming weeks and months (on several topics, some on ColdFusion and/or CFML, some on generic topics applying to any server, and one on SQL Server 2016 SP1 specifically). I thought I ought to post that fact here (I have often failed to think to do that here over the years).

I offer below first the events at which I'll be speaking, and then the preso titles and descriptions for any readers interested. (As an update, I was informed on 5/16/17 that I'd been selected to speak at NCDevCon. While it's not in "spring/summer" per the subject above, I've added it to the info below.)

First, the events

I've mentioned previously the several upcoming CF events, and I'm thrilled to have been selected to speak at the first 4 of them (the conferences, whose calls for speakers have closed. And have or will put in for the next ones, when they've opened them.):

• The Adobe ColdFusion Government Summit in a few days, Apr 18-19 in DC
• Into The Box, next week, Apr 26-28, in Houston
• cf.Objective(), Jul 21-22, in DC
• NCDevCon, Oct 7-8, in Raleigh

I'm especially delighted to return to my homeland (the DC area) twice in the coming months.

And I'm also speaking a couple of times at an upcoming non-CF (non-live) event:

• The 2017 Spring Virtual Conference for the SQL Server Worldwide User Group (SSWUG), being held May 2-3 and which is a free online event

This is not the first SQL Server event I've spoken at, as I've spoken in past years at the PASS Summit conference as well as SQL Saturday and similar regional events.

(All my past presentations, more than 120 of them, are available online at my presentations page.)

Second, the sessions

OK, that's the "where". Now the "what".

My talk at the Adobe CF Government Summit

First up, chronologically, I'll be speaking at the Adobe CF Government Summit, and I'll be presenting my classic hidden gems talk, this time for CF2016 (though curiously they renamed it from "Hidden Gems in" to "Hidden Gems of"):

1) Hidden Gems in Adobe ColdFusion 2016

Prepare to be surprised! In this talk, veteran CF troubleshooter and presenter Charlie Arehart will continue his tradition of identifying hidden gems, this time in ColdFusion 2016. Sure, we hear all about the big, new features in each release, or some that wow certain developers (or disappoint others), but in every release of CF there are always lots of little things that go unheralded and which may be just what you've been waiting for or may delight you, and this is just as true in CF2016. Some may solve a long-standing problem for you, or provide a new technique, whether related to coding, troubleshooting, configuration, administration, enterprise integration, and more.

My talk at Into the Box

Next, again I'll be speaking the following week at Into the Box, and will be presenting one talk (though I'll also be the "subject" of the ContentBox workshop the day before, with Gavin and Esmerelda, as they demo the process of converting a CF site and apps to running under ContentBox):

2) Are spiders eating your servers? The impact of their unexpected load and how to counter it

For years, I've watched people try to tame "server problems" with a focus on their code, their SQL, the jvm, and so on. Yet often it turns out that the root cause is actually unexpected load. And that load may be from things you never expected (automated), at volumes you never expected. I've found folks with as much as 80% of their web traffic to be such unexpected automated traffic! Worse, there are characteristics of such automated visits that may actually have MORE IMPACT than "real users": for instance, did you know they create a new session/client variables, and run session startup code, for each page they visit?!

The good news is there are solutions to better manage (or simply block) such automated requests which may already exist in your environment, and tools you may consider (some free, some commercial) which can be easily implemented. There are even SAAS solutions that could help alleviate such problems with just a single tiny change in your environment! You may also want to consider some admin configuration options related to sessions and/or client variables, as well as reconsider some coding choices in your session startup code.

In this session, veteran server troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will guide a more detailed review of the issues above, including how to identify such traffic, more on these specific impacts, and most important identifying the solutions along with their pros and cons. He has helped shops achieve dramatic reductions in impact from such automated requests, resulting in greater server stability and performance.

My talks at the SSWUG Spring Conference

The next week, I'll be presenting two talks at that SSWUG Spring Conference online event. One will be:

3) SQL Server 2016 SP1 changes the game: things you can do now that were Enterprise-only before

As some may know, the recent release of SQL Server 2016 SP1 included a major change that enables nearly all features to work in all editions. In other words, there used to be features that were Enterprise-only (or Trial or Dev), such that folks on editions below that (Standard, Web, Express, and Express LocalDB) could NOT use, at all. Or you may try things in Trial/Dev only to find they didn't work in production if using one of those other editions, or Azure SQL DB. Now you can use many features previously limited to Enterprise-only. This opens doors to capabilities which will be very helpful, even amazing, to many.

And this is not just about features that are new in SQL Server 2016 but also some features from previous editions which are also now available in editions other than Enterprise (of course, you need to be using SQL Server 2016 SP1 to get the benefit of being able to use such features on an edition below Enterprise).

In this talk, veteran server troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will outline, discuss, and in some cases demonstrate the features that are now available. He'll also indicated the specific editions where they are, as well as why they are so important, and he'll conclude with some related changes of interest, all of which can be considered before leveraging or planning for this important change of functionality.

The other one will be a reprise of my "spiders" talk, but geared more generically to SQL Server users (the problems I discuss can affect anyone running any app server, and by association any DB server--or web server). As such, the description is just a bit different or that audience, as of course will be some aspects of the talk.

4) Are spiders eating your SQL servers? The impact of their unexpected load and how to counter it

For years, I've watched people try to tame "database problems" with a focus on their code, their SQL, their app server, and so on. Yet often it turns out that the root cause is actually unexpected load. And that load may be from things you never expected (automated), at volumes you never expected. I've found folks with as much as 80% of their web traffic to be such unexpected automated traffic! Worse, there are characteristics of such automated visits that may actually have MORE IMPACT than "real users".

A common reaction on learning of this unexpected volume is to want to "block" such automated requests, and perhaps some could be, but most just needs to be better "managed". (And bad guys have become clever about looking like "regular users".) The good news is that there are solutions to better manage (or simply block) such automated requests which may already exist in your environment, and there are tools you may consider (some free, some commercial) which can be easily implemented. There are even SAAS solutions which could help alleviate such problems with just a single tiny change in your environment!

In this session, veteran server troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will guide a detailed review of the issue, including how to identify such traffic, more on their specific impact, and most important identifying the solutions along with their pros and cons. He has helped shops achieve dramatic reductions in impact from such automated requests, resulting in greater server stability and performance.

My talk at cf.Objective() and NCDevCon

Then finally, my talk at cf.Objective() in July and NCDevCon in October will be:

5) What's new in CF 10, 11, and 2016 that you may have missed?

Are you moving up to CF2016, or maybe 11? In doing so, are you skipping over 11, or perhaps even 10, in that move?

Shops often drag their feet upgrading from one version of CF to another and may well skip multiple releases in the process, so that they may not have paid attention to what was new in the release(s) skipped. Can you name the top 5 or 10 features/changes in these three most recent releases?

In this presentation, veteran CFer Charlie Arehart will help fill these gaps for you, highlighting the top features of 10, 11, and 2016, along with some hidden gems. (Whereas his classic "hidden gems" talks have gone deep to uncover a few dozen features per release, this talk will necessarily focus on just some key ones.) With demos and resources for learning more, you'll be in a better position to take full advantage of your new CF installation.

I look forward to seeing folks who may be attending these events, and I hope those who attend my talks may enjoy and benefit them!

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