Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 06-12-2023 Cooking, Father's Day, & the Shrinking Household

 Hello Dear Reader! This past week was a busy one.  As we've started to settle into the new house we are transitioning from eating out or having meals delivered, to knowing where the pots & pans are so we can cook again.

I made a really nice beef stew and butter chicken from scratch.  My family is full of picky eaters, so the true litmus test of any meal is the answer to the question, "Is this make it again good?".  The answer to both of those dishes was a resounding yes from even my pickest of eaters.  There was one hold out on the butter chicken, but after a rousing review from the rest of the household my son Will tried it with all of the lack-luster enthusiasm of a 5 year old being told to "eat their vegitables".

I was asleep when he made it home from work and heated it up, but the lack of leftovers in the morning told me I could hang the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

This past Sunday was Fathers Day here and in many countries around the world.  It was a great day over here at Casa Ball.  My Mom, Dad, Mother-in-law, little Sister, beautiful Wife, & the kiddos all went to brunch, we watched a Cubs game (to bad they didn't win), and I grilled out burgers. Also our household and my buddy Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) put together some videos for you all.

Here's one from my family.

Here's one from Neeraj.

And a big HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to all the Dad and the role models guiding people out there!  Your impact will be felt for generations and is essential to all those that you care for.

Father's day brings the realization closer to home that our household is shrinking.  My youngest is off to visit her Mom until early August and my oldest is off to Summer classes at college.  In the Fall my daughter will be back, but my youngest son goes off to college several hours away.  There is a bitter sweet feeling to all of this.  We've done our jobs properly.  The kiddos are starting to be off in the world.  I will need to figure out how to make smaller portions or have more people over for dinner!

All this to say, I remember when they were little and they wanted your attention non-stop.  If you have kids that are those ages appriceate those times, they will pass by before you know it.  But there are many new adventures still to be had, look forward to those as well.

Alright Dear Reader, let's get to that content!

MONDAY 6/12/2023

On Monday Neeraj Jhaveri released his first SOLO video Microsoft Fabric Decision Trees, Deciding Which Service to USE!!

In this video he walks through some of the documentation that we have for Microsoft Fabric to help you understand what services you should use based on your specific skill sets!

WEDNESDAY 6/14/2023

On Wednesday we posted my latest video Microsoft Fabric, Notebooks, Spark, Writing New Tables to our Lakehouse, & Baseball! I doned my trusty Microsoft Zune t-shirt and walked through how to take data in our Lakehouse that we've created using a shortcut so we do not have data duplication, and then how I walk through some data exploration and write out a data frame as a table in my Lakehouse!

I use this to determine the best day of the week to see my favorite baseball team play, the Chicago Cubs.  The key to this is invoking your imagination to see what it possible when using the service.  If you get a chance I hope you will check it out!

TUESDAY 6/13/2023

On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table! It was another great show with my colleauges.

As always the STAR of this show is the creators from the Azure Data Community.  Here is the content in order of appearence: 

Neeraj

• Announcing Microsoft Fabric capacities are available for purchase | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric  by Mihir Wagle (he/him) Twitter @Ravskkaur

Bradley

• Working with ALS – ALS Awareness Month 2023  by Steve Hughes Twitter  @DataOnWheels via @SQLServerCentrl

Dan

• Hybrid Flexibility in Azure SQL Managed Instance   by Rie Merrit Twitter @IrishSQL

Josh

• Foldable SQL Regions   by Jess Pomfret Twitter @jpomfret

Neeraj

• Synapse Real-Time Analytics: Discovering the best ways to get data into a KQL database  by Anshul Sharma Twitter @anshuldsharma

Bradley

• Azure chaos STUDIO  by Arun Sirpal  

Dan

• T-SQL Tuesday #163 Invitation – What is the best piece of Career Advice you ever received  by Gethyn Ellis Twitter @gethyn_ellis

Josh

• Announcing a general Availability of SQL Bindings for Azure Functions     by Drew Skwiers-Koballa Twitter @SysAdminDrew

Neeraj

• Things to Do for Father’s Day: 20 Fun Ideas   by Alison Ensign  Twitter @FamilySearch

Bradley

• Get skilled on Microsoft Fabric – the AI-powered analytics platform  by Shannon Lindsay Twitter  @shan_gsd

Dan

• PostgreSQL Tutorial for beginners   by Daniel Calbimonte Twitter @SQLShack

Josh

• Create Your Own Microsoft Fabric Environment  by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader, don't forget we have our Azure Data Community Round Table at 1 PM EST on Tuesday, and today Daniel Taylor (@DBABulldog | Twitter) will have his latest MS Tech Bits posted at 12 PM EST today!!  SECURE Azure SQL Managed Instance Backups with Azure Storage Private Endpoints!! 

Make sure to check that out when it is LIVE.  I hope your weekend was wonderful, if you have something you did that was awesome sound off in the comments!  I love to hear from you.

As always Dear Reader, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 06-05-2023 Live 360, the Missing Week, & the Pain in the Back

 Hello Dear Reader! Let's address the missing week.  Last week I was really behind due to the move.  We did not have a Monday video and despite my best efforts a blog did not get out.  It is in the draft's, partially written, and my goal is to try to publish it soon. However, other things are taking precedence.

For example, we moved A LOT of stuff. We had a full crew of able bodied kiddos, all recent High School graduates or current college students, and me.  I did my best to keep up with them.  But they are the heroes of the day.

26 foot truck started off empty at the old house and suddenly, and by suddenly I mean realizing that this new couch while cool was so heavy that it took 7 of us to lift it and get it on the truck and I-will-never-do-that-again had a realiztion that next time we would have movers or just sell the couch with the house because the idea of moving that thing can F@%& ALL THE WAY OFF.... Ahem..... as I was saying.... suddenly we were unpacking all of the large items at the new house. 

Thankfully the unpacking process went faster than the loading process, and by faster I mean we are also selling the bed's with the house; so that does it the house, the couch, and the beds, because we are not going up those stairs with everything again NO THAT IDEA CAN F...... Ahem....

Clearly the next move, movers will be employed.  Hopefully, that will not be for quite a bit of time.  There's still a lot of clean up to do.  There is a lot of things to do with the new house as well.  

Pictures to hang, er, re-hang in a more centered way that reflects less the mad-dash to occupy a house but rather the long term goal to live with artwork being less slightly off-kilter.

The next day we all appeared very sore and tired.  Everyone needed coffee before we could leave the house.  As a treat I took everyone to breakfast at the Walt Disney World's Steakhouse 71 inside of the Contemporary Resort. 

I booked this as a last minute thing.  I wanted to thank everyone for all the hard work.  You can see the amazing cast of family and friends as we awaited our table that morning.  The food was AMAZING.  Seriously, seriously, good.  Normally I take pictures.  That's my thing.  We were all so famished we ate with reckless abandon.  I had Walt's Prime Rib Hash with an over easy egg, we had an order of the Seasonal Pancakes for the table for all to split.  They were blueberry with lemon and they were divine. I had a bite of Sue's filet off the Steak and Eggs.  The whole family came away full, happy, and resolving to make it back to Steakhouse 71 for another breakfast and of course steaks!

When Sue and I took the truck back, we had a beautiful site in store.  It had rained on the way there and was starting to become intermittent.  As I hoped in her car to ride back home we looked up and saw a full end to end rainbow.  What a beautiful site, as we drove it actually became a double end to end rainbow and the end seemed to be at the area surrounding our new home.  Not a bad start.

That was last week. This weekend everything started out pretty good.  We were going to clean Saturday and then had plans for Sunday.  Late Saturday I did something wrong and the pain in my back started.  I was down for the majority of Saturday and Sunday as well.  Thankfully I had a muscle relaxer left over from a neck issue.  I remembered that and took it Sunday night before bed.  I'm doing much better today, but other than a really nice family dinner on Sunday.  Not a lot to write about.

This past week the Tales from the Field crew was busy cranking out videos for this week and next week, as well as coordinating some really cool content drops with the Microsoft Fabric PG for later this month.  

Alright, let's get over to that content!

WEDNESDAY 06-07-2023

On Wednesday we released Microsoft Fabric, VS Code, Notebooks, & Spark! Set it up, connect to a Workspace, EDIT, & Upload!! One of the big questions people have is how do I integrate my existing tools with Microsoft Fabric.

In this video I showed how to connect VS Code to your Microsoft Fabric workspace, how to download, modify, and upload a notebook.  If this interests you, I'd love to hear from you!

TUESDAY 06-06-2023

On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table!  We started started talking about the weekend and how we wake up feeling sore for a variety of reasons and that Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) has lost 40lbs!!!  WAY TO GO JOSH!!

As always the star of the show is the content:

Neeraj

• Introducing the end-to-end scenarios in Microsoft Fabric  by Ravs Kaur Twitter @Ravskkaur

Bradley

• Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization, Why?  by Derek Wilson Twitter @thesqlsith

Andres

• Announcing our improved experiment tracking tools in Azure Machine Learning by Ami Patel  

Josh

• Azure SQL DB Private Link / Private Endpoint - Connectivity Troubleshooting  by Sergio Fonseca Twitter @FonsecaSergio  

Neeraj

• AI and Xmind : How to Create A Mind Map with ChatGPT - Xmind: The Most Popular Mind Mapping App on The Planet.  by Jay Twitter @xmind

Bradley

• What’s New in SSDT 17.6: Ledger, Performance, Copilot by Subhojit Basak Twitter @subho4594

Andres

• Understanding ChatGPT Plugins: Benefits, Risks, and Future Developments  by Mary Newhauser  

Josh

• What is Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric  by Reza Rad Twitter @rad_reza

Neeraj

• Thought Leadership: What It Is and How to Master It in 2023  by Margarita Loktionova Twitter @semrush

Bradley

• CREATE AND VERIFY MICROSOFT FABRIC CAPACITY  by Dharmendra Keshari Twitter @Sachit_Keshari

Andres

• Build Intelligent Applications using ChatGPT & Azure Cosmos DB  by Mark Brown Twitter @markjbrown

Josh

• Deploy and run a Azure OpenAI/ChatGPT application on AKS via Bicep  by Paolo Salvatori  

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader, we've got a video coming your way today.  Neeraj Jhaveri(@Twitter |@Neeraj_Jhaveri) is bringing you Microsoft Fabric Decision Trees, Deciding Which Service to USE!! today!

Tomorrow is our weekly Azue Data Community Round Table featuring content from the community!  If you want to add your content to the list we cover sound off in the comments below.

Wednesday we will have another MS Tech Bits and I hope we will see or interact with you sometime this week.

As always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-22-2023 Microsoft Fabric Launch & Moving Home Offices

 Hello Dear Reader!  Sorry this is so late, moving houses has gotten me a bit behind this week.  I will do better next week!

As you may have heard last week Microsoft Fabric was officially unveiled to the world.  As a part of this launch we had a few extra live videos as a part of the larger Digital Event that happened in conjunction with Microsoft Build!  We have a ton still to come on Microsoft Fabric and there will be LOTS of videos so stay Tuned!

Also as I previously mentioned, we are moving.  This weekend was a very seminal moment for me.  On Friday after 4 delayed installation attempts the internet was installed in the new house.  That can only mean one thing to me.  Time to move the office.  Once I move the office, I'm working there.  So this weekend I packed up everything, moved it, and set up the office.  From here on out I'm in the new house!

I'm really excited.  While it will not show up on the videos, the ceilings are really high.  I've had pictures, awards, mementos from over my career that have often been packed up in a closet. For the first time I have space to put it all out and it's really kinda awesome.

Lot's of feelings go into this move.  The house we are leaving has been very good to us.  This is where we all truly became the family we are today, went through some very difficult and painful moments, high school for both my boys, COVID, elementary school for my daughter, the kids started dating (something I'm still not sure I'm ready for), some brilliant wonderful happy moments, game nights, movies nights, movie premieres, and BBQ's.

Cheers to you old house, thanks for the memories.... and I hope we get some of our deposit back!

Ok Dear Reader, onto the content.

MONDAY 5-22-2023

On we released my latest video USE Azure Managed Identity to Backup Azure SQL Managed Instance to Blob Storage, NOT SAS Tokens!!

In this video I demo how easy it is and discuss why you should be using Managed Identity instead of SAS tokens to perform your Azure SQL Managed Instance COPY_ONLY backups.  This was a lot of fun to make and a great video

WEDNESDAY 5-24-2023

On Wednesday Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) and I presented an Introduction to Microsoft FABRIC!! How to Enroll, How to Opt in, How to build a Data Warehouse!! 

My love for Neeraj has never been a secret the man get's a big introduction on everyone of our Tuesday Azure Data Community Round Tables, and the fact that we got to break the news of Microsoft Fabric meant the fireworks were flying!  We covered how you enroll, towards the end we covered how Power BI Admins make sure to opt into the preview, and I showed how to create a Data warehouse and ingest data!

THE PRE-SHOW

As if that wasn't enough the Tales from the Field team was all together myself, Neeraj, Josh Luedeman (Twitter| @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio), & Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) were joined by Adam Saxton (Twitter | @AwSaxton) one half of the dynamic duo of Guy in a Cube(Twitter | @GuyinaCube),  Kal Yella, and the wonderful Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) joined us to kick off the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event for Day 1, with the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event Pre-Show Day 1.

We started off by finding out that the Power BI CAT and Azure Synapse CSE Team were now the Fabric CAT Team!  We discussed Day 1, feedback from customers, questions we had seen, and much more.  You definitely want to check it out!

THURSDAY 5-25-2023

As if one extra live show was JUST NOT ENOUGH on Thursday we came back to do the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event Pre-Show Day 2. Adam Saxton, Kal Yella, and Bradley Schacht from the Microsoft Fabric CAT Team joined us.  

We discussed the content from Day 1 of the Digital Event, what you could expect to see on Day 2, and we did DEMO'S!!  Make sure to check this out!

TUESDAY 5-23-2023

On Tuesday we were eagerly awaiting the announcement of Microsoft Fabric on the Build Keynote during the pre-show.  This was our first opportunity to talk about it publicly.  

The star of these shows is, as always the content created by the Azure Data Community.  Without further ado, here it is:

Honorable Mentions

• Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG    by  Bradley Ball, featuring Adam Saxton & Bradley Schacht & Guy in Cube Twitter @SQLBalls, @BradleySchacht, & @GuyInACube

• Microsoft Build 2023 Book of News 

Neeraj

• Using Azure DevOps with Synapse Workspaces to create hot fixes in production environments  by Vytas Suopys Twitter @Vytas Suopys

Bradley

• How to take secure, on-demand backups on SQL Managed Instance  by Zoran Rilak Twitter @zoranrilak

Andres

• Building Interactive Enterprise Grade Applications with Open AI and Microsoft Azure  by Andrei Zaichikov  

Josh

• Spreading your SQL Server wings with serverless SQL Pools  by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

Neeraj

• What Is Responsible AI? | Built In  by Ellen Glover Twitter @BuiltIn

Bradley

• Junior Data Professionals The Key to Every Data Team's Success  by Abhinav Jayanty + Taylor George

Andres

• How to deploy your AI model on Edge devices with Azure  by René Bremer

Josh

• Azure SQL input binding for Azure Functions   by Anuraj Parameswaran Twitter @anuraj

Neeraj

• Generative AI defined: How it works, benefits and dangers Generative AI defined: How it works, benefits and dangers (techrepublic.com)  by Owen Hughes Twitter @owenrdhughes

Bradley

• Reflections on My First-Ever Presentation, Fifteen Years Later  by Tim Mitchell Twitter @Tim_Mitchell

Andres

• An Overview of Microsoft Azure NLP Solutions  by Lida Ghahremanlou  Twitter @lida_ghr

Josh

• Using Docker on Windows with Persistent SQL Server Settings and Databases  by Josephine Bush Twitter @hellosqlkitty

WRAP IT UP

No assignments this week Dear Reader as it is already Thursday.  I will attempt to resume our normal cadence next Monday!  My hope for you is take some time, rest, relax, and think of the fact that I'm moving the heavy stuff during the hot months in Florida.  Then take an extra deep sip of that ice cold <insert beer, mixed drink, or non-alcoholic beverage of choice />.

Until next time Dear Reader and as always, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-15-2023 The Graduate & the Very BIG Week

MY WILL, MY BUG, MY GRADUATE

Just a little under 18 and one half years ago, William came into my life.  There are a lot of words to describe a new baby, but the one surround Will's birth is hard to quantify.  Don't get me wrong.  Joy, happiness, elation, wonder, awe, all-encompassing-love, all of those words were there.

Holding Will's hand on day 3

Eventually.  

Will's birth was the most intense 24 hours, and then week, of my life. 

William was my third child, so having one was not new to me, but this experience was.  Whereas his brother and sister had cried loudly, been weighed, and handed over in warming blankets to be cuddled with; William was rushed away.  He was born into this world with a collapsed lung.  

While I've spoken about this, I've never written about it before.  There is a lot flooding back to me just looking at the picture on the screen. He was born just before Christmas and I've always been thankful to the nurses, the doctors, and other stall at the Sentra Hampton Roads Hospital until we moved we used to bring them cookies every Christmas Eve, remembering those wonderful people there over night with us.  

The Graduate & Family

Let me skip forward in time.  William's lung miraculously reinflated.  After 5 days the oxygen hood came off, we were able to hold him, and feed him.  He came home a bright beautiful bouncing baby boy, and grew so very fast.  We have had lots of adventures.  

My Bug, my nickname for Will, loves roller coasters and amusement parks.  I think he is the only person in the family that loves theme parks as much as I do.  For the last 15 years he has been my roller coaster riding buddy.   

Last Thursday he graduated from High School.  Roller coaster riding buddy indeed.  That first hill was a big one.  He is off to college this Fall, but it feels like only yesterday I was holding that little hand.  One of my favorite quotes comes from the Little Buddhist Handbook, "The trouble IS you BELIEVE you have time".  Yes.  That is the trouble.

Next up, we will head to college orentationnext month.  Before then we will move, because we bought a house.  We've all been doing a lot of work on it getting it ready to move in.  William is leading the way on the painting front, having painted his room and helping is younger sister with hers.  The move is officially underway, not just because of the hours of work, or mounds of things we've already moved.  No, the way I know this is I am sore in places I forgot I could get sore.

THE BIG WEEK

We talked about it last week Dear Reader, but a very big week is upon us.  Microsoft Build starts today.  On Wednesday 5/24 & Thursday 5/25 there will be a massive Digital Event that will be simulcast across the Guy in a Cube, Power BI, and Azure Synapse YouTube channels starting at 9 am PST.

One hour before we will be live on the Tales from the Field YouTube channel.  Adam Saxton (Twitter | @awsaxton) of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyinaCube), Kal Yella & Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse PG, and of course Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Andres Padilla (@Nodestreamio), and myself will be live.  

Here are the links to the pre-show:

May 24th 2023 - Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show

May 25th 2023 - Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show

For more read our pre-show announcement blog, Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG. 

MONDAY 5-15-2023

On Monday my friend Daniel Taylor released an AMAZING video.  He walked through the process of taking Ola Hallengren's SQL Server Mainteance Solutions and using them with Azure SQL Database using Azure Data Factory.  

If you have Azure SQL Databases in your environment Azure SQL Database Maintenance Plans with DYNAMIC Azure Data Factory Pipeline!!  It is one of our most viewed videos ever, and Dan is very excited to add on to it!

WEDNESDAY 5-17-2023

On Wednesday I released 5 REASONS TO USE Azure SQL Managed Instance!!  This was our first list.  I had several different videos I've made and will make on Azure SQL Managed Instance.

I don't feel like enough people are aware of the service and what it can do.  If there is an item on the list you want to see a longer video on, let me know we always love the feedback!

TUESDAY 5-16-2023

On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table featuring content from the creators in the Community for the Community!  We had a great conversation opening the show about Mother's Day weekend and the activities surrounding it for each of us, plus a Happy belated Mother's Day to all the MOM's out there!!!

As always the star of the show is the content, so here is the content by the WONDERFUL creators by order of appearence on the show:

Honorable Mention

·         Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG   by  Bradley Ball, featuring Adam Saxton & Bradley Schacht & Guy in Cube Twitter @SQLBalls, @BradleySchacht, & @GuyInACube

Neeraj

Scaling strategies for large scale AzureCognitive Services deployments  by RK Iyer

Bradley

·         Announcing General Availability of Azure Data Studio extension SQL Database Projects by Steve Jones Twitter @Way0utWest via @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

·         Getting started with Azure Machine LearningResponsible AI components  by Ruth Yakubu Twitter @ruthieyakubu

Josh

·         Azure Resource Inventory by Claudio Merola Twitter @ClaudioMerola_

Neeraj

·         ChatGPT + Python+ Power BI   by Gabe Araujo, M.Sc. Twitter @AIGenesis3

Bradley

·         Script to Decode SQL Server Locking and BlockingWait Resources   by Eric Blinn Twitter @mssqltips

Andres

·         Pandas, Spark, and Polars - When To Use Which?  by Martin Karlsoon Twitter @HelloKarlsson

Josh

·         A Beginner's Guide to Database Reliability Engineering by Kovid Rathee Twitter @Kovid_R

Neeraj

·         How Microsoft can help you go passwordless thisWorld Password Day by Alex Weinert  Twitter @Alex_T_Weinert

Bradley

·         T-SQL Tuesday 162 – Execution plans according toChatGPT  by Hugo Kornelis Twitter @Hugo_Kornelis

Andres

·          Getting aGrip on Data and Model Drift with Azure Machine Learning  by Natasha Savic & Andreas Kopp

Josh

·         TDE: Database Backups and High Availability  by Matthew McGiffen Twitter @mattMcGiffen

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader remember today is the kick off of MS Build.  If you haven't registered go do it, it takes a few minutes and it get's you free access to the big show.

On Monday we posted USE Azure Managed Identity to Backup Azure SQL Managed Instance to Blob Storage, NOT SAS Tokens!!  if you are using Azure SQL Managed Instance you want to go give that one a look, this is the way we should be doing our COPY_ONLY backups.

Today is the Azure Data Community Round Table, followed by our live pre-shows on Wednesday & Thursday.  PLUS a very special video drop this Wednesday.

We hope you get to spend some time with us this week and as always Dear Reader, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG

 Next week is Microsoft Build and there is a Microsoft Digital Event occurring on May 24 - 25 starting at 9 AM Pacific Time for a live simulcast with a lot of exciting announcements.  This is EXTENDING into a 2 day digital event!  This is a big event that will be emceed by everyone's favorite hosts Adam Saxton & Patrick LeBlanc the dynamic duo also known as Guy in a Cube. 

 

Now before we get to the BIG EVENT, we need a pre-show!  The pre-show will be happening as a lead in each day on Tales from the Field  one hour before the Digital Event kicks off.  The Digital Event will take place as a simulcast on the YouTube channels of Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, & Guy in a Cube.

 

Tales from the Field is a show hosted by four Microsoft data experts from the Azure FastTrack PG, all of the hosts are engineers on Azure FastTrack helping customers and working with Microsoft Product Groups to improve the customer experience.  The hosts of Tales from the field are Bradley Ball, Josh Luedeman, Andrés Padilla, Neeraj Jhaveri, & Daniel Taylor.  They produce technical content weekly and hold an Azure Data Community Round Table highlighting blogs, videos, or any other helpful information provided to the community by the creators within community!

 

Their guests for this pre-show will be Adam Saxton Principal PM for the Power BI CAT Team and one half of the dynamic duo that is Guy in a Cube and Bradley Schacht Principal PM from the Azure Synapse Analytics Product Group.

Read the rest of this blog over on the Microsoft Technet Blog here!

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-08-2023 Mother's Day, Big News for MS Build, & the recap

 Hello Dear Reader!!  We also have some really, really, BIG NEWS for next week!  It also happens that next week is Microsoft Build, make sure to register for free!  But that news is coming a little later today.

What's that..?  I can't drop a teaser at the begining and then not give you a little more?  That's fair.

...OK Dear Reader here's a sneak peak.  

We have not one, but TWO one hour live shows that will be on Wednesday May 24th & May 25th.  We also have TWO big guests.  

Brad Schacht (Twitter |@BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse Product Group AND Adam Saxton ( Twitter | @AWSaxton) aka one half of @GuyInACube will be there.  But that's really all that I can say until a bit later.  Other than, this is going to be fun & this is going to be BIG.  Enough about the future let's talk about last week.

This past week was Mother's Day, happy belated Mother's Day to all the Mom's out there!  My parent's 50th wedding anniversary was this past year.  My siblings and I teamed up to buy them a cruise to Europe and they are out having a wonderful time!!  Because of this Mom was not here this Mother's Day but there are plenty of Mom's to be recognized in the family, more than just those that we get to see locally.  My niece had her first Mother's Day, congratulations Destiny!!  To celebrate we did what has become an annual tradition.  I make mimosa's, we take the ladies to the spa, and we all get pedicures.

Let's start with the mimosa recipe because it is a good one:

• 1/3 a champagne flute of Orange Juice
• 1/2 oz Don Julio Blanco tequila
• 1/2 oz Gand Marnier Cognac & Orange Liqueur
• fill remaining flute with good champagne like Veuve Clicquot

The pedicures started as a simple thing.  I took my wife and her Mom, my amazing mother-in-law Judith Gonzalez to get a pedicure and manicure.  The next year my Mom & youngest Sister came over and I included them.  Instead of just sitting there waiting I decided to join them for the pedicure and the tradition began. 

The next is that every year I get the kids to help me cook Mother's Day brunch.  The main course was by request.  Heart shaped chocolate chip pancakes.  I don't do anything simple.

In my house bananas are enjoyed by all.  So I made a banana's foster's syrup to go with the pancakes.  For this recipe you need banana's, butter, brown sugar, good dark rum (we used my Diplamatico), and maple syrup. 

You make banana's foster, flambe, then you add in the maple syrup and stir, finally ladling over finished pancakes.  Quick tip, the syrup is hot so if you cut fresh unsalted cream butter and put it on the pancake, then pour the syrup, the butter will be perfectly soft when the plate lands on the table.

Pedicures, pancakes, mimosas, all complete I set about fixing a toilet at the new house and installing a bidet.  All in all a very productive weekend.  Dear Reader, I hope you and your family had a great and Happy Mother's Day.  Ok, on to the recap.

MONDAY 05-08-2023

On Monday Andres Padilla (Twitter | @NodeStreamIO) & Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) presented Computer Vision using Azure ML Studio!!  

In this video Andres walk through the steps to connect to Azure machine Learning Studio, Importing the required libraries, downloading the data, all the way through training your model.  

WEDNESDAY 05-10-2023

On Wednesday I released No-Code PERFORMANCE GAINS with Intelligent Query Processing in Azure SQL & SQL Server!!  I walk through 2 different ways to restore the World Wide Importers database into Azure SQL Database. 

Then we review how to provision a Serverless Azure SQL Database and why you want to use Serverless.  Using demos from Bob Ward's ( Twitter | @bobwardms) demos from his amazing SQL Server 2022 class that is available for free here!!  I then show how self-healing Persisted memory grant feedback works in Azure SQL Database by dropping the performance of a query from over 1 minute to less than 2 seconds!

This is in place for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server 2022 we just need to have our database compatibility level at 150 or above.

TUESDAY 05-09-2023

On Tuesday it's my FAVORITE half-hour of the week! The Azure Data Community Round Table with Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla, Neeraj Jhaveri, and myself.  We recapped the fun that we had at SQL Saturday Jacksonville.

After a conversation that covered Guardians of the Galaxy 3, The Flash, and Andre's amazing drone demo at SQL Saturday Jax we got to the real star of the show.  The content.  Here is the content covered on the show in the order of appearance:

Neeraj

• Microsoft Digital Event  by Tyler Mays-Childers, Guy in Cube Twitter @sposit & @GuyInACube

Bradley

• Using the New Open Source SQLCMD to Create Containers by Steve Jones Twitter @Way0utWest via @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

• Everything You Want to Know About Onnx by Janakiram MSV Twitter @janakiramm

Josh

• Four Different Ways to Incorporate Azure Synapse and PowerBI by Ginger Grant Twitter @desertislesql

Neeraj

• Build real-time dashboard with Power BI dataset produced by Azure Stream Analytics no-code editor  by Xu Jiang Twitter @xujx

Bradley

• Automating Database Maintenance on Azure SQL by Josephine (Branch) Bush Twitter @hellosqlkitty

Andres

• Supercharge Archive Content Discovery with ChatGPT and Azure Video Indexer  by Fardau Van Neerden Twitter @thefmister

Josh

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

Neeraj

• Analytics Vidhya's Top 10 Blogs on Computer Vision in 2022  by Sanjana Rajpal Twitter @AnalyticsVidhya

Bradley

• The Blooming of AI Spring  by Patrick LeBlanc & Buck Woody Twitter @PatrickDBA & @BuckWoodyMSFT via @Spotify

Andres

• Microsoft’s New Azure Storage Mover Makes Cloud Migrations Easier  by Rabia Noureen Twitter @RabiaNoureen11 

Josh

• Monitoring SQL Server on Linux Part 1: Installing sysstat (Surviving Without Perfmon)  by Rick Lowe Twitter @dataflowe

WRAP IT UP

A couple of reminders this week.  Don't forget Dear Reader we have our Azure Data Community Round Table Tuesday 5/16 at 1 pm EST. Today we have an MS Tech Bits where our very own Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) walks us through how to use Ola Hallengren's scripts to set up Database Maintenance on Azure SQL Database using Azure Data Factory! 

Remember to stay tuned for that big news, and as always Dear Reader Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-01-2023 A new house, a reunion, & 15 Years of SQL Saturday Jacksonville

 Hello Dear Reader, what a week!  On Thursday my wife and I closed on a new house.  We are so incredibly excited!  We owned a house for a very short period of time.  When we bought the house we did not look at the school districts.  

When the kiddos came to live with us full time during the pandemic we quickly found out the schools were..... really bad.  Great neighborhood, beautiful house, bad schools.  So we quickly came to the conclusion that we would have to move.

We found and even better neighborhood, AMAZING schools, but the cost was the house.  We hadn't owned long enough to get much equity.  As a matter of fact we lost quite a bit of money.  We sold during the pandemic before the housing market went crazy.  We thought we would save for a year and then buy a new house in this great neighborhood.  What's the old phrase?  "Man plans, God laughs".  Yeah, the housing market went nuts.  One year turned to two, two years turned to three, and three looked like it would turn into four.  With three months left before our lease expired I did a lot of calculations and found we might be able to get a house. AND WE DID!!!

We had just started to really enjoy doing the small things that make a house yours.  The best part is we only one mile away from our old house, so we get to keep the same awesome schools, we stay in the same neighborhood, and I get to keep my same running & walking routes!

That would normally be enough news for a month, but you know me there is no rest.  After closing on the house I hit the road to the 15th Anniversary of SQL Saturday Jacksonville.

Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), & myself all decided we should submit to the conference.  The really amazing part, as much time as we've spent with online we've never all gathered together before.  Josh, Neeraj, & I had met pre-covid during work trips, but Andres & Dan had joined our team during the pandemic.  Our good friend Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse Product Group joined us!

We started out with a nice dinner on Thursday and the in person preparations began for our pre-con DBA 101: A Full Day of Fundamentals.  We had a great group of gentlemen that joined us for the day.  We covered a lot of basics about SQL Server and the Cloud, specifically Azure, but we made sure people understood how to translate that skill set. 

We did a lot of group exercises, starting with building on premise, hybrid, and cloud architectures. Then applying SLA's, RTO, RPO requirements so we could discuss how to configure backups, high availability, and then disaster recovery.

We reviewed basic security within SQL Server which translates to Azure SQL, as well as some basic Identity topics covering AD & AAD.  Great group of people and a great way to kick off Friday.

Friday night took us to the SQL Saturday Speaker dinner and then a group activity we had planned together watching the Guardians of the Galaxy 3.  No spoilers.  Great movie and a really nice send off to the trilogy.

After that we headed back to the hotel, hung out, had some nice conversations, and then went to sleep so we could start the big event, SQL Saturday.

All of us who have been in the community for a while have seen the ups and downs that happened during the pandemic.  We all had a lot to deal with in that time, and there were some devastating losses for me personally.  Maybe next year I will write about it, but there are some areas that are still to raw for me.  I'm sure there are for a lot of people.  I tried to remind myself during that time that in the middle of something you cannot see the end, nor can you see the recovery.  I held fast to the idea that they would occur.

In the SQL Community I have made so many close deeply personal friendships, that calling people "friends" hardly does justice to what I feel.  Of those people Karla & Rodney Landrum are up there at the top.  The last time I saw them they came to Orlando to visit.  Karla, Rodney, Sue, and myself went to Chef's in the Paris district of Epcot.  We also had them over to the house.  I cooked, Karla mixed the drinks (which I loved still to this day!) and we had a fantastic time.  That was 2019.  There is no way we could have known how long it would be until we saw each other again, what we would have encountered.  It was all I could do not to breakdown crying as I hugged Karla.

I didn't realize she would be there, and the joy I feel even know days removed is palpable. I'm so glad we are having in person events again.  I'm so glad I get to see my friends, donate my time, and teach people.  If you have a SQL Saturday happening near you, you've got to check them out, I cannot recommend getting involved enough.

Ok, over to the recap.

MONDAY 5-1-2023

On Monday Josh Luedeman published his first video, way to go JOSH!!  Josh's video Setup Windows with Chocolatey for Data Developers walked us through using the Chocolatey packages to install and configure post-Windows installation tasks easily!

He installed Git, WSL 2, Ubuntu, Spotify, Discord, PowerShell, Azure Data Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, and Signal!  If you find yourself setting up a new Windows computer, this is a fantastic shortcut to the installation process. 

WEDNESDAY 5-3-2023

On Wedneday we released my latest video on creating a Dynamic Pipeline in Azure Synapse & Data Factory!!  This is a process that I've walked many customers through over the years.  The key is we are trying to minimize the number of Source & Sink data sets created to import data in this video.

Dynamic Pipelines are incredibly powerful and can be used in many different ways. This was just one of them, but based on the reaction from you Dear Reader, we will be showing a few additional ways this can be used!

TUESDAY 5-2-2023

We kicked off the Azure Data Community Round Table this past week discussing the weather and how much we were all looking forward to getting together at SQL Saturday Jacksonville.

Of course as we all know the star of the show is the Community.  So without further ado here are the links in order of appearance on the show:

Neeraj

• The Plain-English Guide to Data Warehouses [+ Examples]  by Swetha Amaresan  Twitter @swethamaresan

Bradley

• How to create Linked server from SQL Server to Azure SQL Database by Madhumita Tripathy

Andres

• Opening the eyes of the machine: Computer vision with AutoML by Gavita Regunath & Dan Lantos Twitter @gavi_sr

Josh

• Optimizing Postgres for write heavy workloads ft. Checkpoint and WAL configs | Citus Con 2023   by Samar Sharma  Twitter @samay_sharma

Neeraj

• Capture Changed Data From your Cosmos DB analytical store (Preview)  by Mark Kromer Twitter @KromerBigData

Bradley

• SQL Server Row Count for all Tables in a Database by Dattatrey Sindol Twitter @dattatreysindol via @mssqltips

Andres

• Building a startup using Azure Computer Vision by Nikhil Sehgal Twitter @nikhilsehgal_ai

Josh

• Chocolate Install Git Config by Gary Ewan Park Twitter @gep13

Neeraj

• Best practices for Purview and a federated way of working   by Piethein Strengholt Twitter @phstrengholt

Bradley

• EightKB 2023 – Schedule and Registration by Andrew Pruski via SQL Server Central Twitter  @dbafromthecold via @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

• Bring all your workloads to the edge with AKS Edge Essentials by Jason Farmer Twitter @MG_cafe01

Josh

• Monitoring Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance by Bradley Ball Twitter @SQLBalls

WRAP IT UP

What an amazing week we had last week, and it's only going to get better!  This week we have Andres & Neeraj presenting Computer Vision with Azure ML Studio that will be live today at 1 PM EST.

I will have another video this Wednesday, and of course our Tales from the Field Azure Data Community Round table will be this Tuesday Live at 1 PM.

I'm sure we will figure out some adventure to have this weekend, alright Dear Reader.  Time for me to head out, as always Thank You Dear Reader for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad