Showing posts with label Azure SQL Database. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Azure SQL Database. Show all posts

Monday, May 8, 2023

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

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

Josh

Neeraj

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

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




Monday, October 24, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-17-2022

 Hello Dear Reader!  I hope you had a fantastic weekend.  This weekend we celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary, my oldest daughter flew into town for an early birthday, & my oldest son came home from college for all the festivities.  Needless to say it was a SUPER BUSY weekend.  Lots of driving, good times and laughs.  

"So Balls", you say, "super happy for you, but what happened on the show last week!"

Thank you Dear Reader, keeping me on track as always. 

TUESDAY OCTOBER 18TH

We had an amazing week on Tales from the Field.  We kicked off the show with our special guest Jes Schultz (Twitter | @grrl_geek).  Jes is a Sr. Program Manager on the Azure Data Tools & Experiences Product Group.  She had a great opportunity to for those looking to participate in a focus group on the future of the Query Editor for Azure SQL Database.  If you are interested in participating, click here.


We played the hosting game.  Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) couldn't be with us so Hope Foley (Twitter | @hope_foley) graciously filled in for Josh. Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) hosted.  Our topic was on Interviewing Trick's & Tips.  We discussed great things for people to keep in mind when they are interviewing, and tips we've used along the way.  Not only did Hope fill in for Josh, but she WON!  Josh didn't even show up and he managed to beat AndrĂ©s Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio ) and myself.  That's the way it works, and Josh will be host next Tuesday!!! 


THURSDAY OCTOBER 20TH

Thursday was our Community Round table.  Once again, we gathered together.  Josh was with us this time, and we reviewed the great posts that YOU the community put together.


Here's the links from the content covered on the show:

Josh

a. Restore or copy an Azure SQL Database with resource tags by Hugo Calzada Martin

Bradley

a.   Azure Networking: Identify NSGs without NSG Flow Logs and Traffic Analytics configured with Azure Monitor Network Insights by Wim Matthyssen Twitter @wmatthyssen

Neeraj

a. interviewing — Ask a Manager -- all your interview questions answered by Alison Green Twitter @AskAManager

Andres 

a. Demystifying Data Explorer  by Gilles L'HĂ©rault

 Josh

a. Too Many Plans for the Same Query Hash by Eitan Blumin Twitter @EitanBlumin

Bradley

a. Announcing the new Ebsv5 VM sizes offering 2X remote storage performance with NVMe-Public Preview by Priya Shan

Neeraj

a. Steps in the Interview Process: What to Expect | Career Sidekick by Biron Clark Twitter @BironClark

Andres

a. Starting with Azure SQL Edge on Raspberry Pi by Hasan Savran Twitter @SavranWeb

Josh 

a. Azure AD Connect: What to know about In-place Upgrade from version 1.0 to 2.0 ? by Sabrina Kay Twitter @oh_is_sabrina

Bradley

a. Preparing for the SQL PASS Summit by Edwin Sarmiento Twitter @EdwinMSarmiento

Neeraj

a. Top 12 Job Interview Tips and Tricks by Alison Doyle Twitter @AlisonDoyle

Andres

a. 5 Ways to Boost Query Performance with Databricks and Spark by Kash Sabba


WRAP IT UP

Great week last week, and this week is looking really amazing as well.  I hope you will join us on the show.  You can comment on any of our twitter pages where the show will be broadcasts, or on my Linkedin Page, or comment on our YouTube live stream and your comments will make it onto the show!  The show is 1 pm Eastern Time US, on Tuesday's and Thursdays.


Hope to see you there Dear Reader, and as always.  Thank you for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad