SQL Konferenz 2026

Earlier this month we attended SQL Konferenz 2026, held at Congress Park Hanau, just outside Frankfurt. The venue is large and perfectly suited for conferences, which the name itself already suggests. Everything from logistics to session organization ran smoothly, and the overall experience felt extremely professional.

One highlight we must mention is the food and refreshments throughout the event. Without exaggeration, this might have been some of the best conference catering we have ever experienced. The organizers like to say they run the event “for fun” but judging by the level of coordination and attention to detail, we are fairly certain there is a very capable (green-dressed) team working behind the scenes to make everything run this well.

Friendly Competition on the Expo Floor

The expo area gave us a great chance to catch up with familiar faces in the database monitoring world. Our neighbors included teams from Redgate, dbWatch, and Idera, all companies operating in the same space as us.

Even though we technically compete in the same market, these conferences always bring a spirit of friendly rivalry. Conversations quickly turned into feature discussions, product comparisons, and the inevitable “what have you built recently?” moments. It was clear that everyone was busy and each company now has some new capabilities to attract future customers.

Speakers in the Chill Zone

Our Gold sponsor stand came equipped with a small sofa, a coffee table, and several chairs. Once we added our large TV on a stand, the space naturally turned into a small chill zone where people could comfortably stop by for a moment. This setup quickly became a place where attendees and speakers could drink their favorite beverage and relax between sessions, talk about SQL Server topics, or simply exchange stories from conferences and everyday life.

During the event we had the pleasure of welcoming several speakers to this corner of the expo area. Among them were Gianluca Sartori, Mladen Prajdic, Tonie Huizer, and Jovan Popovic. Some conversations went deep into database topics; others drifted toward conference travel stories or random topics from everyday life.

These informal exchanges are often one of the most valuable parts of a conference, and our improvised chill zone turned out to be the perfect place for them.

Bringing More Technical Content

During our previous conferences and from social media we noticed a recurring theme. Many people in the community would like to see more technical sessions at conferences like this.

With that in mind, we decided to use our dedicated sponsor session slot to deliver one of our more technical presentations. Our colleague Maciej presented his session on SQL Server Call Stack Analysis, a topic that dives deep into understanding what is happening inside SQL Server when diagnosing complex problems.

The session happened during the lunch break, which is usually a difficult time slot. Despite that, we were pleasantly surprised that more than ten attendees (!) chose the session over the excellent lunch waiting outside. For a highly technical topic scheduled during lunch, we considered that a success.

The Stamp Quest and the Wooden Puzzles

To participate in the conference raffle, attendees had to visit every sponsor booth and collect stamps along the way. Naturally, that brought many people past our stand.

What made us happy was that most visitors did not just grab the stamp and leave. Many stayed to ask about our services and our SMT monitoring solution. Others got curious about the wooden puzzles we placed at the stand. Once someone started trying to solve them, it often attracted a small group of onlookers and sparked new conversations.

The result was simple. By the end of the conference almost all merchandise was gone. Only a few stickers and several T-shirts remained. Out of the seven boxes of merchandise, we had brought with us, we returned home with just two partially filled boxes!

Looking Ahead

Germany hosts many data-related conferences and community meetups. Still, SQL Konferenz in Hanau stood out as one of the most engaging events we have attended there.

We had countless interesting conversations, gained many new LinkedIn connections, and saw genuine interest in both our SMT monitoring product and our SQL Server consulting services. Now we are looking forward to turning these new connections into real collaborations and tackling the database challenges they will bring our way.

And if everything goes according to plan, you will definitely see our booth and wooden puzzles again at SQL Konferenz next year.