I know some of you are wondering if I have "gone dark" or something. But hey, there a conference comin' up and I'm on the hot seat!

Much of what will be discussed, I could (and may) post here eventually, but for now it's time to burn this stuff into the presentations so all of us have a productive meeting on Day One.

Now some of you have also fired off to me some interesting requests for the discussion, most of which I agree with so we'll definitely make room for it. In the end, the whole of the best practice session is not really for you to hear me prattle on about derring-do - although I do have tales to tell - but more to gather the tales that you have to tell, so that all of us are better for when we return to our respective machines.

One of the requests is a deeper dive into the Ten Rules of Large Scale Data Processing that I added to Netezza Underground. We could probably spend all day on that stuff - because it can go really deep, like outta-hand deep on some of them. Not to worry, as I am a highly trained professional moderator and promise to keep you on track.

Also note that on Day Two there is a special session on TwinFin migration, with some emphasis on Netezza-To-Netezza migrations since some of us are in the middle of these kinds of conversions. I think this will be especially productive if some of the Enzees (that would be you) are present (and not shy!) so that the attendees can wrap their heads around the overall process and what to expect.So that's another invitation to not only bring your notepad, but your notebook (the one that you use for design sessions) and give us a little non-proprietary insight on how you conquered the world (or at least, your corner of it).

Not so strangely, the overall, high-level methodology for moving from an older Netezza to a Twinfin does not change (compared to moving from say, Oracle to a Twinfin), but the challenges can be multivariant. It is these challenges, nuances and subtlties that make life fun - so bring some of them with you! We'd like to hear the adventure.

And yes, the rumors are true. I have come under intense pressure to publish yet another Netezza book, and this was evident and underway as of last Fall. The real problem is in deciding what goes into the book and what should be left out - but the left-out stuff is valuable too. I think the consensus now is that the content needs to be divided into two books, and publish them both in a rapid fashion. Hey, it worked for Back to the Future, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings - but I don't have any delusions of such wild success - I just need to get them into print.

I am working right now on a mongraph concerning inheritable objects, namely views and such, that in some ways do, and some ways don't translate into systems of scale. After all, once the data gets really big, the physics becomes even more critical. Any inefficiency will only get worse over time. Okay, that's my hook to pique your curiosity. More later!