Come see me talk about SQL Server and Lightning Connect at Dreamforce 2015

I am happy to say that I will be presenting again at this years annual Dreamforce, Wednesday September 16, 2015 at 9:15am. The session is titled, “Exploring SQL Server Azure Database Relationships Using Lightning Connect“, and I should be in the Mobile Theatre in Moscone West.

Lightning Connect is what I consider to be a game changer in the world of Integration. It allows you to easily (and the key word here is easily) setup a real-time connection between your external data and Salesforce.

After setting it up, you can query external data from within Salesforce just like you would any other sObject. No exhausting setup of some overly complicated publishing/subscriber model (which is something I myself have unfortunately been involved with). No, you just publish your data as oData, setup an external data source in Salesforce, define some external relationships, and off you go.

Now, as with any new technology like this, there are a few gotchas to be considered. I will be covering some of these, as they pertain to setting up a connection to communicate with a SQL Server Relational database hosted on Windows Azure. The key takeaways I hope to communicate during this session will be:

• What you need to know to work with Visual Studio and SQL Server Azure
• How quick and easy it is to setup a connection and query data one-way in real time
• What you need to know to define relationships in Salesforce

Hope to see you there!