Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-20-2023 & Kiddos Growing Up

William, right, 11 years ago the morning of our college tour

 Hello Dear Reader! When I got off the plane from SQLBits I wasn't feeling great.  To be honest, I was a little concerned.  I'm a diabetic asthmatic.  Some people are generally unconcerned when they get a cold, some even feel that way about Covid.  Not I.  

For years when I get a cold they would linger, antibiotics would need to be perscribed, consumed, and then about a month later my voice would return to normal.  I've been very fortunate that my immue system seems to have recieved a kick start in the last few years.  No longer is the need for antibiotics absolute.  

 No longer is a cold a one month sentence of exercise purgatory.  Really, I feel lucky.  Despite feeling awful on Monday & Tuesday, by Friday morning I felt great and sounded like Barry White.  So with me feeling better, my wife very happy with my deep sexy voice, we packed up the car and drove my youngest son William to a campus tour of the University of North Florida. 

It was a really beautiful campus and the tour was fantastic.  William is going to be very happy up there.  I'm familar with UNF thanks to SQL Saturday Jacksonville.  It has been held on their campus since my first trip to the event all the way back in 2011 and SQL Saturday #74.

Seeing the campus from the eyes of a perspective student was amazing.  I'm used to the excitement of Friday morning pre-con's and the buzz in the air as you follow the SQL Saturday signs to the parking garage.

This time it was following the signs to the Campus Tour, taking in the campus, food venues, gym, and different  class rooms.  What an exciting time he is about to embark on!  As if it wasn't enough, father time gave me a solid kick to the feels.  The picture posted above of William and his younger sister finger painting was my Facebook memory.  My phone alerted me that I had a memory, and I clicked on it.  All I could think of was how time flies.  There's no way, when I snapped that picture 11 years ago, that I imagined him getting ready for college.

Alright Dear Reader, let's get to the re-cap.

MS TECH BITS - WEDNESDAY 3-22-2023

My deep voice was in full effect as we took a jump into the Transaction Log.  The Transaction Log is an essential part of SQL Server.  That's an understatement.  That's like saying your lungs are essential.  The Transaction Log is fundemental.  We look at what it stores, how it holds data, how Virtual Log Files work, and a little bit about recovery models.

If you are interested in replicating the demos, I'm keeping them over in my GitHub Repo for SQL Scripts.  The demo envrionment I used for this was a docker container running SQL Server 2022, if you want to know how to set up that environment check out this video.

COMMUNITY ROUND TABLE - TUESDAY 3-21-2023

The Community Round Table featured my sultry deep voice as well as Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), and Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog).

We did a quick recap of SQLBits talking about the wonderful event, and then we covered the content.  No more delays, let's get to it.  Content in order of appearence on the show:

Neeraj 

Performance Tuning Synapse Dedicated Pools - Understanding the Query Lifecycle by Sarath Sasidharan Twitter @sarathsasidharan2016 

Bradley 

Call to Action for Female Speakers to Submit to EightKB  by Tracy Boggiano Twitter  @TracyBoggiano 

Dan 

SQL: Setting local date and time for a session in Azure SQL Database  by Dr. Greg Low  Twitter @greglow 

Josh 

How To Convert Parquet Files into GeoJson Files and Save it in Data Lake using Synapse Notebooks by Sally Dabbah 

Neeraj 

Creating a custom disaster recovery plan for your Synapse workspace Part 1   by Freddie Santos Twitter @fredguis 

Bradley 

Building, Deploying, Sharing a Remote Jupyter Book in Azure Data Studio by  Steve Hughes  Twitter @DataOnWheels 

Dan 

How I evaluate personal safety at tech conferences  by Eugene Meidinger Twitter @SQLGene 

 

Josh 

Azure Data Factory Global Parameters and Azure Bicep Templates  by Tao Yang Twitter @MrTaoYang 

Neeraj 

My week at SQLBits 2023: Why You Should send your Employees to Conferences by Kay Sauter Twitter @KaySauter 

Bradley 

Connecting Power BI to Azure SQL Database using Private Endpoints  by Andy Cutler Twitter  @MrAndyCutler 

Dan 

Why read committed is the default isolation level, and what to do next  by Kendra Little Twitter @Kendra_Little 

Josh 

Azure Data Factory CI/CD with GitHub Actions  by Olga Molocenco   

 

WRAP IT UP

We did some experiements earlier this month and loved the reception we recieved.  We are working hard over here at Tales From The Field, TFTF, HQ to come up with some additional content for next month.

This week we have our Community Round Table on Tuesday & our MS Tech Bits on Wednesday.  We hope you will join us for them, and if there's anything you would like to see sound off in the comments!  We always love to hear from you Dear Reader.

And as always, Thank You for stopping by!

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-13-2023 & SQLBits 2023

 Hello Dear Reader!  What an incredible week we had.  I started off traveling on Monday of last week.  At the airport I ran into my friend David Pless ( Twitter | @dpless), he and I were on the same flight to London!  It was great to start off the trip hanging out with a good friend. 

After landing Tuesday morning, I took the Tube to Padington Station, then the Great Western Railroad out of London heading to Newport Wales.

There is a Rail Strike occuring in the country right now.  That added a bit of tension to travel days as we did not know if trains would be running or not.  One day your train would not have any issues, the next you would recieve alerts that your service may be disrupted.  Luckily I did not experiance any issues with trains, but the drama hung in the air all week long for everyone.

SQLBits was taking place at the Newport Wales ICC.  It was a fantastic venue, for more on that take a look at the shorts which started with a walk up and grew to be a review of the days events at SQLBits. 

I was hustling to get out there because I was assisting with an amazing pre-con being put on my by Azure FastTrack Product Group, PG, colleague Stijn Wynatts (Twitter | @SQLStijn), Filip Popovic & Mark Pryce-Maher  from the Microsoft Azure Synapse PG, & Mr. Simon Whiteley (Twitter | @MrSiWhiteley) Microsoft MVP for Lakehouse in a Day!  I was one of the people walking around and assiting others. I did that straight up until our Tuesday show.  

Wednesday I assisted with Bob Ward (Twitter | @BobWardMS), Marissa Matthews, and Buck Woody's training day, The SQL Server 2022 Workshop.  It was a PACKED room.  We had over 120 people sign up and we needed multiple additional tables.  We did a lot of hands on work, I know if you where there chances are I helped you do it at some point!  It was another fantastic day of learning.  After that we went to a Girlguiding, Welsh Girl Scouts, volunteering event with other Microsoft Employees and Microsoft MVP's.  We helpd to pick up litter and keep some of their fields and facilities clean.  This was just good for our souls.  It was wonderful to meet people from Newport and work along side them.  This was hands down my favorite event that we did this week.  Which is high praise, because this week was amazing.

I will get more into the work done in the updates below, but it was a wonderful and exhausting day that would end with myself in the Auditorium presenting with none other than Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA).  Saturday Patrick & myself presented on The Most Powerful Azure Service that You've Never Heard of.

Intruged?

Let's head over to the recap.

MS TECH BITS - MONDAY 3-13-2023 & WEDNESDAY 3-15-2023

On Monday my colleague Marco Aurelio Cardoso from the Azure FastTrack PG joined me to discuss OpenAI and Prompt engineering.  We put this video together to showcase a partical application of how these services would be utilized.  We also had some fun asking about the physical hygine of Master's of the Univers Characters as well.

Marco showed me how to create an Azure AI Chatbot that utilizes an OpenAI model to create an interactive Chatbot in a Slack Channel.  We had a really good discussion about Responsible AI and the need to understand the source for the information that our model is returning. 

Wednesday I had a video on how to set up a SQL Server 2022 Instance in Seconds, also it is free using the free version of Docker and SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition on a Docker Container.

There are some internal concpets regarding SQL Server that it is importiant to understand.  Understanding how to stand up an evironment quickly to test out new features is a good skill to have and will be key for some of our futuer conversations.

SQLBits 2023 SHORTS 

All this week I was making shorts videos recaping some of the activities of the conference.  I'm only one human and could not make it to everything, but if you couldn't make it to SQLBits or if you want some nestolgia from the event please take a look.

Newport Wales ICC walk up to #SQLBits 2023 Training Day 2

SQLBits Behind the scenes Day 1 Keynote, Sessions, & Volunteer Event

EPIC SQLBits Costume Party, 5K Run, & General Sessions Day 2!!

Last Day at SQLBits 2023, Community Keynote, General Sessions, & Saying goodbye

As you can see this was an exceptional event.  So many fantastic sessions, I cannot wait to go look at the SQLBits channel to find the sessions I missed and watch them when they are posted!  Keep in mind SQLBits makes these sessions available for you to consume so make sure to check them out.

COMMUNITY ROUND TABLE - TUESDAY 3-14-2023

Buck Wood (Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT) joined Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Andres Padillia (Twitter | @nodestreamio), and myself.  Buck and I were live from the SQLBits Conference.  

No further delays, lets get to the content in the order of appearence:

Neeraj

• Roll with us at SQLBits 2023! - Microsoft Community Hub by Marisa Mathews Twitter @MarisaMathews @AzureSQL

Bradley

• Creating an Azure SQL Private Link Endpoint and managing DNS By John Lunn  Twitter @jonnychipz

Andres

• Parameters and Hyperparameters in Machine Learning and Deep Learning by Kizito Nyuytiymbiy  Twitter @KizitoNyu

Josh

• Scale Multiple Azure SQL databases on a logical server  by Laith Ayesh

Neeraj

• Azure Synapse analytics (dedicated SQL pool) data modelling best practices  by Bhaskar Sharma Twitter @sharmabhaskar

Bradley

• Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics Book  by  Thomas LaRock  Twitter @SQLRockStar

Andres

• How to Write Better Prompts for Chat GPT  by Derek Slater Twitter @GripRoom

Josh

• Code Reuse with Spark Functions for Azure Databricks  by John Miner Twitter @JohnMiner3

Neeraj

• Appreciation Posts for Engineers Day Across Globe  by Muskaan Sabarwal Twitter @MuskaanSabarwal

Bradley

• SQL Server Wait Statistics (or please tell me where it hurts…)  By Paul Randal Twitter @PaulRandal

Andres

• ChatGPT-3 Prompt Engineering  by Matt Nigh Twitter @literallynigh

Josh

• Monitoring PgBouncer in Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server  by Varun Dhawan Twitter  @iVarund

WRAP IT UP 

As I type this I'm crossing the Atlantic Ocean to head back home.  I don't know that there is anything left for me to say.

Tuesday we have the Community Round Table & Wednesday we will be dropping our MS Tech Bits.  I'm ready to lean this seat back and get some rest.

Have a great week Dear Reader, be good to one another.  And as always, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-06-2023 & Pineapple on Peperoni

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week was an incredible week.  We dropped new content on Monday, Tuesday had the Community Round Table, Wednesday MS Tech Bits, and released YouTube Shorts all week long.

We also waded into controversy on Twitter.  It began with a seemingly innocent and funny post by Buck Woody (Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT) and well.... it just took off from there.

Needless to say, anyone who doesn't like Pineapple and Peperoni on their NY Style pizza clearly has never tried it and is therefore wrong.  End of discussion.

A quick note.  

*Hawiian pizza is disgusting.  Canadian Bacon is a lie.  Real Canadian Bacon should be maple coated real-bacon.  Not ham.  Ham should not be on a pizza, with the only exception being a supreme pizza.

End note.

My Mom & Dad were over for my youngest daughter's 13th birthday.  Happy Birthday Serenity!  During which my father, who ran a pizza restaurant, and spent over 25 years in the restaurant business. had never tried it.  He did, and he was surprised how good it was.  He even went for a second slice!

On to the recap!

MONDAY 3-6-2023

Andres Padilla (Twitter | @NodeStreamIO) & Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) kicked off Monday with an introduction to Azure OpenAI.  

This video has proven very popular, I'm not going to ruin it for you.  Head over and take a look.  Andres walks us through registering to gain access to & then shows us some of the Azure OpenAI playground.  

TUESDAY 3-7-2023

Tuesday is the new home to our Community Round Table.  It was a great show, but as always the star of the show is the content from the Azure Data Community.

List of content in order of appearance on the show:

Neeraj

• AWS Lambda Function to import CloudTrail Logs to Azure Sentinel by Sreedhar Ande Twitter @sreedharande

Bradley

• SQLBits Agenda and PowerShell, displaying and searching   By Rob Sewell  Twitter @SQLDBAWithBeard

Andres

• IoT Production Training Pack by Raul Alarcon  

Josh

• Farming from space: How orbital data is unlocking novel agriculture insights by Matt Jennings  Twitter @MattJenningsMS

Neeraj

• Power BI Paginated Reports - Subscriptions by Olivier Van Steenlandt Twitter @Oli_Vsteenlandt

Bradley

• Advancing Spark - Power BI Databricks Connector with Native SQL  by  Simon Whiteley  Twitter @MrSiWhiteley

Andres

• Automatic IoT Edge Certificate Management with GlobalSign EST   by John Lian 

Josh

• Using calculation groups or one to many relationships for time intelligence selection   by Alberto Ferrari Twitter @FerrariAlberto

Neeraj

• Azure Synapse Spark Notebook – Unit Testing   by Arun Sethia 

Bradley

• Provide data lake access with Azure Synapse Analytics  by Patrick LeBlanc, Adam Saxton, Guy In A Cube Twitter @PatrickDBA, @AdamSaxton, @GuyInACube

Andres

• Best Computer Vision projects With Source Code And Dataset by Naem Azam  Twitter @naemazamankon

Josh

• Announcing the retirement of Streaming Dataflows  by Jadelyn Ray Twitter @MSPowerBI

WEDNESDAY 3-8-2023

On Wednesday we released The SECRET Language of Azure SQL!!! WAIT STATS! That's right Dear Reader 3 exclamation marks. This is serious.  It's also not really a secret. Everyone wants you to know about this.  

In the comments I have links to a great script that Paul Randal (Twitter | @PaulRandal) wrote over a decade ago, to a book on the subject that Thomas LaRock (Twitter | @SQLRockstar) has written.  Check out the video then read Paul's article and order Tom's book.  This is a very critical topic for any SQL DBA or Developer to understand.

SHORTS

We release a whole host of Shorts related to the subject of interviewing for a job as a SQL DBA or for a SQL Developer.  There quality gets better as the week goes along.  I switched video editing tools and was able to improve the quality. 

Here's a list:

• SQL Interview Questions - Understand the Versions of SQL
• SQL Interview Questions - Follow Up After the Interview
• SQL Interview Questions - Understanding Wait Stats
• SQL Interview Questions - Understanding Execution Plans
• SQL Interview Questions - How do you pronounce 'SQL'?
• SQL Interview Questions- the Data Community
• SQL Interview Questions- The Worst Question Ever
• SQL Interview Questions- DON’T RELY ON 3rd Party Tools!
• SQL Interview Questions- Know the basics Clustered Indexes
• Next Week SQLBits 2023!!

 We will see how this goes, bit of an experiment on our part.  We had around 1000 cumulative views on this last week alone.  It's a difficult format because you have a max of 60 seconds to get a fairly technical point across.  If there is something you'd like to see we'd love to hear from you!

WRAP IT UP

Alright Dear Reader.  I've off to SQLBits this week.  Stay tuned to the channel.  We have a SPECIAL Monday content drop, our Tuesday Community Round table, Wednesday MS Tech Bits, Interview clips from previous interviews will be dropping, also maybe some shorts from SQLBits. 

As always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-27-2023 & Some Changes

 Hello Dear Reader!  Change is the one constant in life and over here at Tales from the Field we've been
hard at work making some changes. 

Over the last 5 months since we kicked off the show we've been experimenting with different content.  We started off with the hosting & interview show on Tuesday and the Community Round Table on Thursday.

We added a few sporadic technical videos, and then in February kicked off our MS Tech Bits every Wednesday.

We are data folk at heart, so after looking at the analytics, we were blown away!  In just one month of technical videos we had almost doubled our subscribers, and our viewership.

While we produced 2 Live Shows per week, we received just as many views and almost doubled our subscribers with one technical video a week.

Out of the Live Shows the most popular thing we do is the Community Round Table, and it is our favorite thing!  We get to talk about you and what you are doing.  We get to shine a light on new voices, wonderful established voices, or voices that you may not be aware.  Each of my cohosts brings an amazing and unique point of view to this endeavor.   I love learning new things or getting new videos to check out thanks to Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri),  Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), & Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman). 

 I guess that is another change as well.  We appreciate the efforts of Daniel Taylor so much that he is now officially part of the team!  Dan is our go-to when we've had someone out of the office and he has an amazing technical mind.  We are lucky to have him as part of our crew.

We want to devote more time to producing technical videos. So this week we are moving our Community Round Table shows to Tuesday and we are pausing the interviews.

We will continue our focus on technical content and making sure that we are rolling out a few technical videos a week.

All based on the work we are doing with customers aka friends over "in the field", answering questions, or covering topics we've had to help our friends with.  A big important part of our job is also our internal work in Azure Engineering, also technically our field.  Hence our name, Tales from the Field.

This week and next week we will be adding a treat of Monday videos and some shorts relating to interviewing for SQL DBA jobs. 

In some fun news we've had the logo refreshed, some laptop stickers made prior to SQLBits & SQL Saturday Jacksonville #1041!  If you are attending those events and want a sticker please find me and I'm taking about 200 so find me I will be happy to share them!

After SQLBits we will be working on a new channel trailer, getting the logo incorporated into our header, and adding it to our video trailers.  We really love it and the graphic designer did a bang-up job!

Ok, enough from me.  On to the Recap!

TUESDAY 2-28-2023

We had the AMAZING Vicky Harp (Twitter | @VickyHarp) on the Tuesday show for an interview.  The subject was Building a Brand.  Vicky is a Principal Group Program Manager for the Windows Developer Experience Team, Vicky has also had a hand in building some of the product, that if you use SQL Sever, you know & love.

This was a fantastic episode were we discussed the concepts of external or community branding as well as internal or building your brand inside of the company you work for.  Both of these brands are ESENTIAL to success.

We covered advice and guidance that Vicky had for people new in their careers and also for those that had been around for a while.  Make sure you check it out!

WEDNESDAY 3-31-2023

On Wednesday we launched our latest MS Tech Bits Make Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose FASTER!!I  On a personal note, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE RESPONSE!  As of right now this is the MOST watched video on our channel and it has not yet been out a week.

If you liked this video, we have some really great content planned at the channel.  We hope you will check it out if you haven't already.

THURSDAY 3-2-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring data from you the Azure Data Community or the community at large. 

This is always a fun show where I get to hang out with my friends and share the things we've all found interesting over the past week.  The star of that show is the content, so without further ado.

Content in order of appearance:

Neeraj

• The Importance of Personal Branding to Career Growth Plus 12 Tips for Branding Success by Jessica H Hernandez Twitter @GreatResume

Bradley

• DataChick's Secure Your Azure SQL Data Challenge By Karen Lopez Twitter @DataChick

Andres

• How To Fix Stream Lag: 5 Reasons You are Lagging by Live Streaming Tech Twitter @tech_streaming

Josh

• Announcing Azure Data Tech Groups v2.0  by Rie Merrit Twitter @IrishSQL & @AzureSQL

Neeraj

• Using OpenAI GPT in Synapse Analytics by Thomas Costers 

Bradley

• Programming Databases with T-SQL for Beginners by Buck Woody & Marisa Mathews Twitter @BuckWoodyMSFT, @AzureSQL

Andres

• Calling REST endpoints from T-SQL by Rob Farley Twitter @rob_farley, @IrishSQL, @AzureSQL

Josh

• Understanding Change Data Capture for Azure SQL Database Part 1 by Greg Low Twitter @greglow

Neeraj

• Personal Branding for Students: 7 Tips You Should Know by Nate Torres

Bradley

• Extracting Data from the AFAS REST API with Azure Data Factory By Koen Verbeeck Twitter @Ko_Ver

Andres

• How I Built A Streaming Analytics App With SQL and Delta Live Tables by Richard Tomlinson Twitter @tomlinsonr

Josh

• SQL Server 2022: Measuring Extended Events Performance Impacts by Jonathan Kehayias Twitter @SQLPoolBoy

WRAP IT UP

This week is a big week Dear Reader. We have technical content dropping this Monday and next Monday.  This Monday we have an Introduction to OpenAI by Andrés & Neeraj!  We have our Tuesday Round Table show featuring maybe your content!?!  

We have our Wednesday MS Tech Bits, this will be yours truly with an Introduction to SQL Wait Stats and we are dropping our SQL Interview shorts all this week.

Most important, Thank You Dear Reader for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-20-2023

Hello Dear Reader! We had a beautiful weekend here in Florida.  Spring is in the air, mainly because the temperature is ranging between 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  This has lead to some rather pronounced sneezing on my morning exercise routine.  The type of sneezing that has scared children and small animals.

It was a really nice weekend, enjoying the tale end of February before a busy March.

This was a good time to get some recordings done, have some outings with the Mrs., and meet the gentleman for a morning of golf.   I'm not good at golf, quite terrible actually. It is a good excuse to spend two hours with friends talking about life, family, and generally trading our perspectives on things.

As we say goodbye to Winter and begin to focus on Spring it seemed like last week was indeed the perfect way to send off February with a bang.

Off to the wrap up.

Tuesday 2-21-2023

On Tuesday we had a little bit of Christmas in February with out Elfster show.  Our good friend Lonnye Bower (Twitter | @ilovesql) had the brilliant idea to have a gift exchange!  Andrew Nathan (Twitter | @AndrewNathan05) & Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) were quick to sound off their excitement and we planned our eventual holiday extravaganza!  

We all were super excited for this.  No technical topics in this show, just a bunch of friends joking around, playing Secret Santa, and opening presents.  If you are looking for some fun and a laugh, please tune in.  This was a really fun time!

Wednesday 2-22-2023

On Wednesday we dropped our latest MS Tech Bits.  These are videos that will cover different Azure technologies and how you can incorporate them.  Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) & Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) walk us how to use BICEP templates from our GitHub repository to walk you through deploying Pattern 1 in order to deploy you Azure Synapse Analytics environment.       

This is a great video and it is just the start, personally I'm really looking forward to additions to this series.

Thursday 2-23-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring amazing content by you the Azure Data Community & sometimes great authors from our community at large!

Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) wore his hat from the Tuesday show, and we kicked off reviewing the content our team had seleted for the week.  But you don't want to here me talk about it, here are the links!

Links in order of appearence on the show:

Neeraj

• A complete CI/CD experience for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022  by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

Bradley

• SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing By William McKnight & Jake Dolezal via gigaom Twitter @gigaom

Andres

• Streamline your Edge AI development and operations with KAN  by Olivier Bloch Twitter @obloch

Josh

• Script to Install the Tools I Use on My Jumpbox by Tracy Boggiano Twitter @TracyBoggiano

Neeraj

• Securing your Synapse environment  by Liliam Leme Twitter @LemeLiliam

Bradley

• Synapse Espresso: Optimize Delta Table performance with Optimize & ZOrder Indexing by Stijn Wynants Twitter @SQLStijn

Andres

• Train your Model in AML, score it in ADX by Adi Eldar

Josh

• Sql-action v2 GitHub Action for Azure SQL Database deployments   by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

Neeraj

• Deploying Azure Bicep Templates Using The Azure CLI  by Chris Pietschmann Twitter @Build5Nines

Bradley

• json_object and json_array Functions SQL Server 2022 Tutorial  By Daniel Calbimonte Twitter @MSSQLTips

Andres

• I Wanna Go Fast!)Performance Optimization Tips & Tricks for Azure Data and App Services  by Marcelo Silva & Victor Santana

Josh

• Using the Dedicated Administrator Connection with SQL Server in a Docker Container  by Joey D'Antoni Twitter @jdanton

WRAP IT UP

We've got a big week planned this week.  Vicky Harp (Twitter | @vickyharp ) Principal Product Group PM Manager will be on the Tuesday show!

On Wednesday I have some MS Tech Bits that will be posted, on Thursday we have the Community Round table featuring data from the Azure Data Community, and it maybe featuring your content!  Let us know if you are writing a blog, producing a video, or doing something noteworthy in the community! 

As always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-13-2023

Josh & myself at Antman & the Wasp Quantumania

 Hello Dear Reader!  It's the Presidents Day holiday today in America. With it comes a 3 day weekend.  To celebrate Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), myself, and our families went to see Antman & the Wasp: Quantumania over the holiday weekend.   

Despite the poor reviews on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was great.  Once again proving why I'm not a movie critic, and why I don't understand how movie critics have a job.  Have no fear, there are no spoilers here.  It was an exciting action-adventure with a really good family theme, and a surprisingly happy ending with a heavy bit of foreshadowing.  I enjoyed it so much I saw it the next day with my oldest son and it was just as enjoyable as it was the first time.

We headed over to visit family for dinner on Saturday, while Sunday was a nice lazy today I am using my
day off to learn a little more about video editing, pre-posting our next two MS Tech Bits , and learning about end screen YouTube pages.  My wife does not have the day off so I'm on dinner duty tonight!

"So Balls," you say "what's for dinner?".

Excellent question as always Dear Reader!  I have some ribeye steaks defrosting in the refrigerator.  I plan to make a homemade chimichurri, put half on the steaks, and vacuum seal them, then sous vide them, before finishing them off on the grill to get a nice char on the exterior.  But enough of us all getting hungry before lunch, let alone dinner, lets head off to the recap!

Tuesday 2-14-2023

Valentines Day kicked off with the Batman of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyInACube), Mr. Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) himself!  We had a great conversation about how to Manage Work Life Balance.  Part of that conversation has to involve admitting that we have not always done a good job of managing work life balance. 

Often it is times of trial and error, life, and loss that teach us that we have to do better.  On Thursday, our good friend Lonnye Bower (Twitter | @ilovesql) challenged us to call it a Life-Work balance, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Wednesday 2-15-2023

First off thank you Dear Reader for the reception of our MS Tech Bits!  This is quickly becoming some of our most viewed content.  This past week was no exception.  In less than a week this has become our 2nd most viewed MS Tech Bits!

I'm working with some friend on the Azure SQL MI PG and we have videos that we will be cross posting helping people to further understand one of my favorite products Azure SQL Managed Instance.  In this video we show how to backup and restore a SQL MI DB from a SQL MI Instance and restore it on a SQL Server 2022 instance.

We do this in an unencrypted manner, but it is completely possible to do this in an encrypted manner.  We will cover that in a future video.  

Thursday 2-16-2023

On Thursday we kicked off our Round Table with our good friend Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) sitting in for Josh Luedeman.  Dan joined Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) to review the AMAZING CONTENT created by you the ccommunity!  

As I mentioned earlier Lonnye challenged us to stop referring to Work-Life balance and instead say Life-Work balance.  Bravo to Lonnye for pushing us to be better!

Here is the content in the order of appearance on the show:

Neeraj

• 24 Work-Life Balance Ideas & Tips for Offices in 2023 by Grace He Twitter @teambuildingcom

Bradley

• Automatic compute scaling with serverless for Hyperscale in Azure SQL Database  By Morgan Oslake 

Andres

• Being ‘Too Busy’ Means Your Personal Strategy Sucks by Roger Martin Twitter @RogerLMartin

Dan

• T-SQL Tuesday #141: Work/Life balance by Jess Pomfret Twitter @jpomfret

Neeraj

• 12 Tips to Improve Your Work-Life Balance by Judy Wolf Twitter @BetterUp

Bradley

• Publish/Migrate your RDL files from Power BI Report Server to the service  by Patrick LeBlanc & Guy in a Cube Twitter @Patrickdba & @GuyInACube

Andres

• Automation: Integrate Azure Data Explorer as Long-Term Log Retention for Microsoft Sentinel  by Sreedhar Ande Twitter @sreedharande

Dan

• T-SQL Tuesday #141: Work/Life balance by Chris Yates Twitter @YatesSQL

Neeraj

• 63 Companies With The Best Work-Life Balance by Henry Oloughlin Twitter @buildremote

Bradley

• Quick Track: Beginner’s Guide to Azure SQL- Azure Defender and Threat Protection By Deepthi Goguri Twitter @dbanuggets

Andres

• Data Quality Testing in the Medallion Architecture with Pytest and PySpark by Carter Kilgour

Dan

• T-SQL Tuesday #141: Work/Life balance  by Dale Hirt Twitter @dalehirt

WRAP IT UP

This week is the week Dear Reader!  Christmas in February, our Elfster show is happening.  Who got who?  What gifts did we each get?  We will finally find out Tuesday 2/21/2023 at 1 pm EST.  This will be a packed show, and it looks to be a lot of fun.

On Wednesday we have another great MS Tech Bits that will drop.  This time Andés and Neeraj are back for the first of what will be a series of videos teaching you how to use BICEP to deploy Analytics Pattern 1 for Azure Synapse Analytics using our Analytics in a Box GitHub repo!

Thursday we will be back with the Community Round table, potentially featuring your content!

Ok, time to rest up while I can.

Oh, one other thing.  We broke a milestone and it is all thanks to you Dear Reader.  We offically hit over 100 subscribers on our YouTube channel!  Thank you so much for joining us on this ride.

And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-06-2023

 Hello Dear Reader!  We had a great last week on Tales from the Field.  This weekend was also a really nice one.  On Saturday a group of friends gathered to share some friendship, conversation, and remember a dear friend that is no longer with us at one of my favorite places in Orlando, Lee & Rick's Oyster Bar.  

Lee & Rick's has been around since 1950 and it doesn't look like much has changed in that time.  That's just the way I like it.  My friends Juan, Dan Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Brad Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht), and myself had a great time.

That wasn't the only thing going on this past weekend as it was also Super Bowl day.  That's sports ball  for the non-sports followers.  The one day of the year that even non-sports ball fans will at least watch the game to see some of the best commercials we will get all year.  Not to mention the halftime show is always amazing.  It did not disappoint!  The game was incredible, two amazing teams playing their hearts out.  Or as I would translate to my friend Buck Woody (Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT), one sports ball team sports balled better than the other sports ball team.  Which is fairly normal. 

On to the show!

Tuesday 2-7-2023

On Tuesday we had iAsia Brown (Twitter | @TechPicasso) Producer at X-Box Game Studios Publishing on the show!  Neeraj had won and was the host this week.  Our topic was Diversity and Inclusion.  iAsia is a brilliant, wonderful, amazing human being.  She is a Veteran of the US Airforce & the Marine Corps. and we THANK her for her service!  Our discussions were wide ranging, poignant, and incredibly valuable.

I understand that this topic could be a trigger to many people because of current events.  If that is the case please take the time to watch this show.  When we make things better for everyone we open them up to have an amazing experience.  Inclusivity opens new markets and individuals to capitalistic opportunities that they may not otherwise have access to.

If you feel I'm wrong, its not hard to find me and I am open to your feedback.

Wednesday 2-8-2023

On Wednesday we dropped our second February video for our MS Tech Bits!  Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @nodestreamio) and Andres Padilla (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) share with us the Tips & Tricks for Azure Data Lake Gen 1 to Gen 2 Migrations.

This topic is a big deal!  Andres worked with the PG to develop the program and work with some of our largest customers in the world to migrate off of ADLS Gen 1 to ADLS Gen 2.  He and Neeraj share their experience and many links that will help you through this journey.  Speaking of which, if this is a situations where you find yourself or your company finds itself, then you should DEFINITELY be working with our team Azure FastTrack CXP.  We are a complimentary Product Group in Azure Engineering that works directly with customers on their move or adoption to Azure.  Here's a link to a video on how you can engage with us!

Thursday 2-9-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring incredible content from you the community.

I could write more about what we did on the show but I'd rather share all the amazing content that we covered in the order of appearance:

Neeraj

• What is Diversity & Inclusion? - Global Diversity Practice by Global Diversity Practice Twitter @gdptweets

Bradley

• Microsoft’s commitment to the data community By Jeremy Kadlec Twitter @MSSQLTips  

Andres

• The elephant in the room: How to write PySpark Unit Tests by Prashanth Xavier

Josh

• Structured Streaming in Synapse Spark by Ryan J Adams Twitter @ryanjadams

Neeraj

• Bing With AI: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Why Search Is Changed Forever by Joanna Stern Twitter @JoannaStern

Bradley

• Resolving Azure Data Studio's Identity Crises by Frank Boucher & Erin Stellato Twitter @fboucheros @erinstellato

Andres

• Combining the power of Optimum, OpenVINO™, ONNX Runtime, and Azure by The AI Show Live (Cassie Breviu, Akhila Vidiyala, Devang Aggarwal)

Josh

• SQL Server on Linux Install - The Basics by Phil Ekins Twitter @SQLPhilUK

Neeraj

• Black History Month: Why we celebrate it in February : NPR by Scott Neuman Twitter @ScottNeumanNPR

Bradley

• Sessions and Speakers by Numbers (SQLBits 2023!)  By Rob Sewell Twitter @sqldbawithbeard 

Andres

• Creating Azure Monitor alerts for Cosmos (and other databases) queries by Andre Dewes 

Josh

• SQL Server Transactional Replication by Gareth Newman 

WRAP IT UP

We hope you will all join us this week, on Tuesday we have a BIG guest.  No spoilers on who won and will be the host, but the one and only Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) from Guy in a Cube on the program on Tuesday at 1 pm EST.  

I've known Patrick for well over a decade at this point in my life.  He's an incredibly man and I cannot wait for the conversation!

Don't forget we will have another MS Tech Bit this Wednesday and as always the Community Round table will be live on Thursday.

We hope to see you there.  And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 01-31-2023

 Hello Dear Reader!  After a weekend with a lot of activities, it was a down week here at Casa Balls.  Woke up and walked a lot.  I'm still not back to running.  A groin pull is not something I've had a lot of experience with, yet it entered my life in December and I cannot wait for it to leave.

I miss running, last year I ran 755.1 kilometers.  Right now I can walk, as long as my pace is not too quick, and I can ride a bike.  The key is really to get out in the morning, take in some sunshine, and get the blood flowing.  

If I can do that I find that helps put me in the proper headspace to be productive during the day.  One of my favorite things as of late it take pictures.

In the morning I set out and take pictures as I walk around the neighborhood.  Even when I did "run", it was actually interval running.  The reason I note that is I tend to take pictures when I'm in the walking portion of my interval run.  With the exception of my phone, I do not carry a camera on me.  I still  manage to get some really great pictures of the day.  

So this weekend was a lot of walking, cooking, and hanging out.  I hope you had a great weekend, and made it out to enjoy some time outside or inside amongst family and friend. On to the re-cap!

Tuesday 1-31-2023

On Tuesday we had Andrew Nathan (Twitter | @AndrewNathan05) Principal Engineering Manager from the Azure FastTrack Core team was our special guest.  We discussed the Zero Trust Security imitative by Microsoft that all customers should consider when building their architecture.  We also discussed International Travel Tips ahead of SQLBits!  SQLBits is the largest Microsoft focused Data Community conference in Europe.  This year it is Hybrid which means Dear Reader, if you cannot make it in person you could still attend this fantastic conference.

We played our hosting show, I was the host this week!  Want to know who won?  Check out the video above to enjoy the show and find out!

Wednesday 2-1-2023

NEW THIS YEAR! We will be dropping weekly technical content every Wednesday, our MS Tech Bits.  This week it was my turn to produce a video.  I was working with a friend and they wanted to know how to troubleshoot deadlocks they were experiencing.  The first step in that process is understanding what is a deadlock and how to find them when they occur.  So I made this video How to Monitor Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance to help.

This is a fun little video where I walk you through the process.  Also there is a bit of an easter egg in this vide.  If the shirt I'm wearing on the video looks familiar that's because I wore this in another blog post, and it means a lot to me.

Thursday 2-2-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table.  This is one of my favorite shows every week because we get to give a shout out to the great content producers in the community.  People writing blogs, producing videos, or even GitHub repositories that help people get things done.  It's just amazing.

Here's a list of the content featured on the Round Table in order of appearance:

Neeraj

• International Travel Tips: 26 Things to Know Before Going Overseas by Clark Howard Twitter @ClarkHoward

Bradley

• Network, Develop & Share @ SQLBits 2023 | Data Exposed Exclusive   By Rie Irish & Simon Sabin Twitter @IrishSQL & @simon_sabin & @SQLBits

Andres

• How to integrate Azure Databricks with Azure Machine Learning for running Big Data Machine Learning jobs?   by Pieter Sterkens

Josh

• Introducing 'Managed AirFlow' in Azure Data Factory  by Avishek Narain Twitter @narainabishek

Neeraj

• 12 Tips to Prepare for an International Trip by Benét J. Wilson Twitter @benetwilson

Bradley

• Tempdb Performance Improvements in SQL Server 2022 are Dramatic by Monica Rathbun Twitter @SQLEspresso

Andres

• Unleashing the power of AI with Azure OpenAI: A simple guide to get started.  by Meer Alam Twitter @alamMeer

Josh

• Beginner's Guide to Azure Data Factory by Catherine Wilhelmsen Twitter @cathrinew

Neeraj

• International Travel to and from the United States   | CDC by The CDC Twitter @CDCgov

Bradley

• Ready to be a Kusto Detective with Azure Data Explorer? By Patrick Leblanc & Guy In A Cube Twitter @PatrickDBA & @GuyInACube

Andres

• MLflow 2.0 and Azure Machine Learning by Facundo Santiago Twitter @santiagofacundo

Josh

• When to have Multiple Data Lakes   by James Serra Twitter @jamesserra

WRAP IT UP

And now we draw the blog to a close.  We have a great line up this week!  Make sure to tune in Tuesday at 1 pm EST for a very special guest.  Wednesday we have our second MS Tech Bit coming up with my co-hosts Andres Padilla and Neeraj Jhaveri covering Tips and Tricks for Migrating Azure Data Lake Gen 1 to Gen 2.

On Thursday we will wrap up our week with our Community Round Table also at 1 pm EST.  I hope you all have a wonderful week, and as always Dear Reader.  Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

 

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 01-23-2023

 Hello Dear Reader!  It's been a while since I had time to sit down and write out a Monday re-cap

This past week was my birthday week.  With all the stress of the current modern world it was really nice to have some dedicated family time.  

The fun started on my actual birthday, my wife gave me an amazing birthday present for me and my oldest son to go to the Mega-Con comic book convention this year!

My parents drove over and took me plus my youngest son to lunch at Yellow Dog Eats, an AMAZING BBQ joint nearby.  

That evening the family went out to eat, we played games, checkers, and topped it off at home with a Double Fudge Coca-Cola cake.  Not on the list of approved items for diabetics, but the goal is to have a little fun.  This was genuinely one of my best birthday.

This weekend we went to Disney Springs with a group of 10 friends.  We headed over to Splitsville Lanes and to go bowling.

The music was surprisingly good, food was solid, and the drinks were flowing.  Which is good, because none of us will becoming professional bowlers anytime soon.

We walked around, enjoyed some live music, and because it was Disney, the shopping.  Enough about that, let's move on to the recap!

Tuesday 1-24-2023

We Had Paloma Garcia (Twitter | @PalomaGarcia40) Sr. Support Engineer from the Azure SQL PaaS Solutions team on the show!  The theme of the show was IT Troubleshooting Skills!

We had a lot of fun, some insightful, and some surprising conversations.  In a very lucky turn of events, I won the hosting duties and will be the host for the Tuesday show on 1/31/2023!

Thursday 1-27-2023

On Thursday we had the Community Round Table!  

Our good friend Dan Taylor joined the show in place of Josh Luedeman who was out for the day.   The guys surprised me by singing "Happy Birthday", very sweet of them to do so, and we covered amazing community content!

Here's a list of all the content covered in order of appearence:

Brad 

All of Paloma Garcia’s Blogs -   (dropdown and select written by) by Paloma Garcia 

Neeraj

  6 Best Practices for Effective IT Troubleshooting by Robert Reselman (Twitter |@Rapid7)

Bradley

Azure Analysis Services Migration to Power BI Premium By Andy Cutler (Twitter | @MrAndyCutler)

Andres

  Application Insights telemetry in Azure Functions  by Orestis Meikopoulous (Twitter|@ormikopo)

Dan

Troubleshooting SQL Server Connection Errors  by Mike Wolfe (Twitter | @NoLongerSet)

Neeraj

Defining Customer Support in 2023: 7 Keys of Modern Support  by Declan Ivory (Twitter | @Intercom)

Bradley

Azure Synapse Analyzer Report to monitor and improve Azure Synapse SQL Dedicated Pool performance by Sanjay Raut

Andres

  Ingesting Time Series Data  by Luis Delgado

Dan

  TSQL Scripts for Troubleshooting Common Issues with SQL Server  by Esther Xin

Neeraj

  6 Ways to Enhance Your Problem Solving Skills Effectively   by Zoe B (Twitter|@Slifestrategies)

Bradley

  SQL Managed Instance: Transactional Replication By Sasa Popovic (Twitter |@SasaPopovicMSFT)

Andres

  ML Inference on Edge devices with ONNX Runtime using Azure DevOps+MLOps   by Wolfgang Pauli (Twitter | @neurobabel)

Dan

  The Art of Troubleshooting for Customer Support Professionals  by Sarah Chambers (Twitter | @sarahleeyoga)

WRAP IT UP

Quick Programing Note: We have to move the Elfster show.  Coordinating schedules with so many wonderful people can be tricky.  But everyone who is on our list is exceedingly important to one another and we have to make sure everyone is there!  So we are moving the Elfster show to Tuesday February 21st.  So a little Christmas in February! 

Alright Dear Reader, I'm heading out for some quick morning exercise before the day begins in earnest.  We appreciate you and hope you have a wonderful day!

As always, Thank You for stopping by!

Thanks,

Brad