Four Teams from Sri Lanka enter Imagine Cup 2009 World Finals

It's with great pleasure & pride that we announce the 4 teams from Sri Lanka who have made it to the Imagine Cup 2009 World Finals to be held in Egypt. What makes their entry a great achievement for Sri Lanka is that, this is the highest number of teams representing our country at the finals in the history of Imagine Cup.

A total of over 800 students from Sri Lanka stepped up and signed up for the competition this year to solve the toughest problems facing us today. This year’s local competition winner from SLIIT is joined in ranks by three teams from the University of Moratuwa in Embedded Development, Robotics and Algorithm and MashUp categories, who are all highly energized and poised to make Mother Sri Lanka proud.

This year, being declared the Year of English and IT in Sri Lanka, seems the ideal occasion to bring the big trophy to Sri Lanka. Do join us in wishing the teams Good Luck at the World Finals in Cairo!!

Team: Mahee Team Mahee Consists of Akila Jayasooriya, Chathura Jayasinghe, Dunith Kankanamage and Lakkana Perera from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology won the Imagine Cup 2009 Sri Lanka competition and fully geared up to compete in the world finals in Cairo in July.	Team: SAS_EN Four members Amila Sajayahan, Sanjaya Ratnayake, Anuruddha Ranatunga, Ruvindee Tharaka from University of Moratuwa, Faculty of Information Technology got together this year to compete in the Embedded category. This team represented Sri Lanka in the software design category in Imagine Cup 2007 world finals.
Competitor: Aravinda P Aravinda is from University of Moratuwa, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Following the great passion he has for Electronics, Computers and Robotics he took his chances and excelled at the Robotics and Algorithm category by making to the top 6 competitors.	Team: Sasrutha Dasuni Kannangara and Supunmali Ahangama are from University of Moratuwa, Faculty of IT. They have being friends since school days. They were members in the 2008 Sri Lanka software design winning team and this year they too the challenge to compete in the Mash Up category and made it to the world top 6.

Monthly Meeting - March 2009

It is with sincere regret do we announce that THE SQL SERVER 2008 COMMUNITY LAUNCH has been cancelled. This is due to several reasons and also due to the fact that it is quite some time since SQL Server 2008 has been released.

However, we shall host SQL Server 2008 related sessions at our monthly meetings very regularly. And in fact the March 2009 meeting will feature SQL Server 2008 on both sessions. Also, this month's meeting has been pushed to the 27th of March (Friday) due to unforeseeable reasons. This month's meeting would feature the following sessions, along with great giveaways...

Session One: Performance Enhancements in SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Preethiviraj Kulasingham
Category: Performance
Duration: 45 minutes approx. 

Session Two: Change Tracking in SQL Server 2008 [More...]
Speaker: Dinesh Asanka (MVP)
Category: Development
Duration: 45 minutes approx.

Microsoft Sri Lanka Training Room
11th Floor
DHPL Building
No. 42, Nawam Mawatha
Colombo 02
SRI LANKA
(location map)

Date and Time: March 27, 2009 1800hrs onwards
Entrance: FREE!

February 15, 2009

Monthly Meeting - February 2009

The February 2009 edition of the SS SLUG monthly meeting was held on the 18th of February. The sessions focused on the topics of Security and Business Intelligence respectively.

Session One: Security in SQL Server 2005
Speaker: Preethiviraj Kulasingham
Category: Security

Session Two: Displaying KPIs in PerformancePoint Server 2007
Speaker: Dinesh Priyankara (MVP)
Category: Business Intelligence

March 23, 2009

January 2009 - Monthly Meeting

The January 2009 meeting of the SS SLUG was held on the 21st of January, 2009. The sessions at this meeting were:

Session 1: Data Warehouse Design - Dimensional Modeling by Gogula Aryalingam (~45 minutes)
Category: Data warehousing/Business Intelligence

Session 2: Slowly Changing Dimensions by Dinesh Asanka (~45 minutes)
Category: Integration Services/Business Intelligence

February 15, 2009

A New Year - A New Form of Energy

Due to unavoidable circumstances we have put off the SQL Server 2008 Community Launch till February. More information soon

January 15, 2009

December 2008 - Monthly User Group Meeting

The December edition of the SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group (SS SLUG) monthly meeting was held on the 17th of December 2008 at Microsoft Sri Lanka. We had two laid back sessions organized for the attendees to blend in with the mood of the season.

Discussion 1: Microsoft SQL Server - A History Lesson by Gogula Aryalingam (MVP)

Discussion 2: Computing Aggregates with T-SQL by Dinesh Priyankara (MVP)

We had some great giveaways as usual, brought to you with the kind support of Redgate Software, SQLServerUniverse.com and Microsoft Sri Lanka.

December 19, 2008

November 2008 - Monthly User Group Meeting

The 20th monthly meeting of the SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group (SS SLUG) was held on the 19th of November 2008 at Microsoft Sri Lanka. Sticking with the norm we had two sessions along with a special redgate segment readied up for the attendees.

Discussion 1: Transactions with SSIS by Supun Thrikawela

Discussion 2: Peer-to-Peer Transactional Replication by Dinesh Asanka (MVP)

Special Segment: redgate SQL Doc

There were great items given away to attentive attendees, sponosred by redgate Software and SQLServerUniverse.com.

November 24, 2008

October 2008 Meeting

The SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group (SS SLUG) meeting for the month of October 2008 was held on the 15th of October at Microsoft Sri Lanka. This time, the meeting focused on SQL Server Analysis Services, and featured two sessions on the technology.

Discussion 1: KPIs in Analysis Services by Gogula Aryalingam (MVP)

Discussion 2: SQL Server Data Mining in the Cloud by Dinesh Priyankara (MVP)

We had some special prizes this month sponsored by redgate Software, SQLServerUniverse.com and Microsoft Sri Lanka.

We shall be publishing the presentations and samples used at the meeting very soon. So keep watching this space...

October 16, 2008

September 2008 Meeting

The September 2008 edition of the SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group (SS SLUG) meeting was held on the 17th of September at Microsoft Sri Lanka. The two sessions that were conducted were:

Discussion 1: A Focus on Views by Gogula Aryalingam (MVP)

Discussion 2: Monitoring and Troubleshooting SQL Server by Preethiviraj Kulasingham

As usual we had some give away items sponsored by redgate Software and Microsoft Sri Lanka.

September 19, 2008

August 2008 Meeting

The August 2008 Meeting of the SS SLUG was held on August 20th at Microsoft Sri Lanka. Please watch this space for more information, coming soon.

August 22, 2008

The Heroes Community Launch for SQL Server 2008 was held on the 21st of May at the SS SLUG monthly meeting. Attendance for the event was based on a first mail - first served basis. Three presentations by each of the three SQL Server MVPs were the events planned for the evening. Read the "Minutes of Meetings" blog for more information and content from the session.

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New SQL Server MVP for Sri Lanka!

Congratulations to Dinesh Asanka for being awarded the Most Valuable Professional title under the SQL Server category. He is incidentally the third SQL Server MVP in Sri Lanka. Dinesh, is actively involved with the SS SLUG and is a frequent author of articles at SQLServerCentral.com, SQL Server Performance and SQLServerUniverse.com among others.

April 1, 2008

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The Latest SQL Server happenings

For information on the latest happenings in the SQL Server world and newly published articles on SQLServerUniverse.com, checkout the SQL Server Universe home page.

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SS SLUG List of Meeting Sessions

If you need to get to a list of all SS SLUG meeting sessions and related downloads, click on the "List of Sessions" link above.

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