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 04-17-2023 Jorge, Wrexham AFC, & Guys Night Out

 Hello Dear Reader!  This past week was one I had been looking forward to for quite some time.  A couple of months ago I had started reaching out to my other guy friends.  We all  have busy lives, but we need to take time to spend with one another outside of dinner's with spouses, game nights, or Marvel movies.

Not that those things aren't great, but something that allowed us to just relax.  

Let me back up a bit, I love the podcast The Armchair Expert with Dax Sheppard.  On it they refrenced a study that lead me to this article on How loneliness is killing men.  Which shocked me.

I have this really cool Uncle we all idolized.  He was always taking trips to go golfing, hunting, or fishing with his buddies.  Growing up I thought that was really amazing.  As I got older and had kids, amazing turned into questions.  

How did he find the time to do this?  Shouldn't he be spending this time with his family and kids?  He was a really great Dad and family man, was his life out of balance or did these things matter?

I should have picked up the phone and called him.  I should have asked.  But I never have.  Then my kids got older, and getting their attention and even time with them became more and more scarce.

This lead to another realization.  My buddy Jorge Segarra (Twitter | @SQLChicken) and I were talking.  Jorge is doing the beautiful work of being a stay at home Dad and taking care of his kids.  We were having a great conversation, he was picking up kids from school, they got in the car like a chaos bomb and he said, "I should probably let you go this is going to be too noisy for you".

"I'm good", I replied and we kept the call going.  I've been a single Dad, a divorced single Dad, and a very lucky married man with a great partner.  The chaos of the call reminded me of picking my kids up from school about a decade ago.  We also realized that not many men could talk about some of the issues I faced and he was facing.  We also talked about how men don't talk about these things.  I brought up the podcast and the article.

We talked about the need of having time to go out with friends, re-engergize, and come back in a better head space to be father's and husbands.  For the first time, I understood my Uncle.

That was January.  We started planning.  We would talk more regularly, it had been months since our last phone call.  That needed to change. 

We found a weekend that worked, it took a while.  We set the date.  There were other gentlemen invited who could not make it, but hopefully next time.  It was this past Saturday.  Jorge, Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), and myself planned a day.

It involved a spa visit for Jorge and myself, a cabbana by the pool for all of us to relax, a nice steak dinner, and watching John Wick 4.  Along the way we listened to Wrexham AFC win PROMOTION and toasted them from afar!!!

The day was perfect and we are all looking forward to the next time.  Long way of saying this, but if you are reading this think of your friends and reach out to them.  It is litterally the best thing you can do for your health.... and theirs.

All right, on to the recap!

MONDAY  4-17-2023

On Monday Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) and Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) delivered a video on Azure Cost Management!  They have a discussion about different options to save money on a subscription.

They also show you how to use the Azure Price Calculator, Cost management and billing in the Azure Portal, how to set a budget, and how to set cost alearts!  Great stuff!

WEDNESDAY 4-19-2023

On Wednesday my video on Azure SQL Space Management for Azure SQL Database came online.  

This was a really fun video to make based off of a customer conversation and our amazing documentation on the subject.

TUESDAY 4-18-2023

The highlight of the week is always the Azure Data Community Round Table.  Josh, Neeraj, Andres, and myself kicked off a review of those articles that we found to be super helpful from the last week.

Here is the star of the show, the content in the order of appearence on the show:

Neeraj

• The Power of AI for Medical Imaging: 5 Key Applications & Use Cases by Katarzyna Rojewska Twitter @k_rojewska, @DLabsAI

Bradley

• Make data more human with Azure OpenAI and Azure SQL by Valentina Alto Twitter   @AltoValentina

Andres

• Integrating Azure OpenAI and Azure Speech Services to Create a Voice-Enabled Chatbot with Python  by Jiadong Chen Twitter @chen_jd

Josh

• Back home, but still a long way to go by Hugo Kornelis Twitter @hugo_kornelis

Neeraj

• How does AI actually work? by Kristina Bravo Twitter @BravoKristina 

Bradley

• T-SQL STUFF – Taking it to the limit by  John McCormack Twitter @actualjohn

Andres

• Using  MLFlow Recipes to refactor messy notebooks by Jeanne Choo  

Josh

• Master Databricks and Apache Spark Step by Step Video Series by Bryan Cafferky Twitter @BryanCafferky

Neeraj

• Can Data and Analytics Help Save the World? by Troy Hiltbrand Twitter @trohil

Bradley

• Using SQL Alerts to Spot Suspicious Activity in SQL by David Fowler via SQL Server Central Twitter @SQL_Undercover  @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

• Next-Generation Computer Vision Capabilities with Project Florence by Adina Trufinescu Twitter @abiramivina

Josh

• Citus Con Reminder (Keynote was at 12-330 ET/9-1230 PT, EMEA tomorrow 9-1230 CEST) by Citus Con Twitter @CitusCon

WRAP IT UP

We've got another great week planned for you, and we hope you can make the time to join us.  On Monday Daniel Taylor is dropping his first ever MS Tech Bits on how seperation of duties requires Azure Administrators and DBA's to work together in order to backup to utilize backup to URL.

On Tuesday at 1 pm EST we have our Azure Data Community Round Table and on Wednesday I will be droping a video utilizing Azure Open AI to read and collect insights on my Azure SQL Data.

Take care of yourself Dear Reader, 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