Conor has worked for Microsoft building database engines for most of his professional career.  He has contributed to a number of widely used products in the industry, from Microsoft Access, SQL Server for Windows CE, and Microsoft SQL Server.  Within SQL Server, he has had a hand in the development of much of the core query optimizer, including features such as the core search framework, statistics, indexes and indexed views, UDTs, distributed queries, and language constructs such as TOP, PIVOT, and INTERSECT.  He is the author of a number of peer-reviewed academic papers and holds numerous patents in the fields of query processing and database engine design. 

Currently he serves as a Software Architect on the SQL Server Engine team and is developing next-generation features and technologies that you will see in future product releases.  He will be talking about how the SQL Server query optimizer is designed and how you can use this information to development of database applications and fix query-related performance issues with production systems.