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 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

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 04-24-2023 Steve Martin, Martin Short, & Tacos

 Hello Dear Reader!  I've realized something writting this blog.  I don't like to sit still.  It is very rare that I have a down weekend, and this weekend was no different.  My amazing wife did something really cool for me for Christmas.

You see I'm hard to shop for, or at least that's what I've been told.  I don't mean to be, but I am.  My birthday is in January.  When I was a kid you got presents on your bithrday and on Christmas.  Even though they are in different years, mine are so close together that for 10 months of the year there is nadda, then 2 months PRESENTS!

So with that in mind, if I want something I tend to buy it.  At this point in my adult life I'm just used to
that.  So Sue came up with something cool.  I love giving people experiences be it with food, giving advice or tips on Orlando, Disney, or Universal Studios or even when peoplke come over playing bartender, setting up events with friends (see last week).

Sue got me experiences, and what a time we've had.  That included this Saturday seeing Steve Martin & Martin Short live.  I was laughing so hard throughout the event, but it wasn't just comedy.  They are story tellers, showmen, and presetors. I couldn't help of people I know like Buck Woody (@Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT ), Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA), or so many other amazing people in our community.  

The timing and the comfort of doing a show with someone you know well.  That made me think of Josh Ludeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman).  There is no one in this world that I've presented with as much as
Josh.  As I enjoyed the banter back and forth you could see the comfort that comes from time and practice.

It was a great time and a great day.  On Sunday we had that unusual down day.  I did some work in the office, getting ready for our soon to be move, and when it came to dinner I wanted out of the house. I snapped a picture while we were out at bartaco.  It has be come more and more rare to have all five of us at dinner together.  Looking at the picture afterwards I realized something importiant.  Serenity is now at the teenage point of making goofy faces in every family photo.

....it'll be a long two years, but I have plenty of her brother's from that period in time.  As the youngest this is the last time I'll have to go through this.  That acknowledgement came with a bittersweet feeling.

All right enough about the weekend, let's get to the round up!

MONDAY 4-24-2023

On Monday Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) dropped his first video on the channel.  Congratulations Dan!  He had a really great point of view, working with a customer he needed to solve the problem of teaching them how to backup SQL Server via URL.  The twist is the DBA's do not have rights to get SAS tokens, and so he had to teach the Azure Admins how to do that portion. 

 Dan walks through both tasks in this video to break down Backup to URL Seperation of duties.

WEDNESDAY 4-26-2023

On Wednesday I went in a different direction.  I had read a blog recently on how to pass a data frame to an Azure OpenAI model so you could ask questions about the data frame.  We had featured it in our Azure Data Community Round Table two weeks ago.  The blog was Make data more human with Azure OpenAI and Azure SQL by Valentina Alto (Twitter | @AltoValentina)

In this video Use OpenAI, SQL Managed Instance, Python, and VSCode to UNLOCK INSIGHTS About YOUR Data!!!, I walked through how to make this work using a data fram from a Domestic Box Office movie data table I had in a database. This was a lot of fun to walk through and the reception to this video has been really nice.

TUESDAY 4-252023

Of courese on Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table where we feature your content and it is always the star of the show. 

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

Dan

• One Way to Provision an Azure Key Vault by Andy Leonard Twitter @AndyLeonard

Bradley

• Moving the SSISDB Catalog on a new SQL Server instance by Rajendra Gupta via SQLShack Twitter    @rajendragupta16 via @SQLShack

Andres

• Analysing Data with ChatGPT (Data Analysis and ML )  by Jesiel (JCharis) Emmanuel Agbemabiase  Twitter @JCharisTech

Josh

• Use ChatGPT to see multiple perspectives. An example: ORMs and database code  by Kendra Little  Twitter @Kendra_Little

Dan

• Troubleshooting Azure Data Studio by Deborah Melkin Twitter @dgmelkin

Andres

• MLOps on Databricks: A How-To Guide  by Rafi Kurlansik Twitter @kurlare

Bradley

• Data API builder – Introduction by Davide Mauri Twitter  @mauridb

Josh

• How to use the new dynamic format strings for measures in Power BI  by Meagan Longoria Twitter @MMarie

Dan

• PostgreSQL for the SQL Server DBA: The First Four Settings to Check  by Ryan Booz Twitter @ryanbooz

Bradley

• ChatGPT blew my mind with this Power BI scenario by Adam Saxton via Guy in a Cube Twitter  @awsaxton & @patrickdba via @GuyinaCube w @StephTBruno @shan_gsd

• Call back to Power BI datasets CI/CD (the easy-ish way)  by @StephTBruno & @shan_gsd

Andres

• AutoML Comparison in Databricks VS Azure Machine Learning by Mohammadsaleh Gharehdaghi Twitter @MG_cafe01

Josh

• The Top 10 Features of PostgreSQL Every Developer Should Know by Ajay Patel Twitter @Bond_AJ

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader!  We have a BIG BIG WEEK!  Not only do we have a video by Josh Luedeman this Monday on how to Set up Windows with Chocolatey for Data Developers in SECONDS!! GIT, WSL 2, PowerShell! and another video by yours truly coming up on Wednesday, but this week is SQL SATURDAY JACKSONVILLE!!

On Friday Neeraj Jhaveri, Daniel Taylor, and myself will be teaching our DBA 101: A Full Day of Fundamentals, but Andres Padilla & Josh Luedeman will be presenting at the event as well.  The whole Tales from the Field crew is together live for the first time at a conference.

This is going to be a lot of fun.  We have 8 sessions on the agenda so come and attend, have a conversation with us, or grab a sticker while we have them!

We hope to see you in Jacksonville, but more than anything Dear Reader thank you for stopping by!

Thansk,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 04-10-2023, Taylor Swift, & The Disney 10 Miler

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week was a really busy week with an even busier weekend.  We will get to the show recap's in a moment but first let's dive into the weekend.

Months ago my wife & youngest son worked together to get Taylor Swift tickets for this past weekend.  I've enjoyed quite a few songs of Taylor's, but live music isn't really my thing.  My wife loves it.  She had a career working in radio and she was the planner & show runner for many many live music concerts.  She "makes" me go with her.  

To be honest I always have a great time, but it is not something I seek out for myself.  So when Sue & William were excitingly explaining to me over dinner how they were able to secure 3 tickets my first thought was they were taking my sister Julie or my youngest daughter Serenity (both of whom would have fought me..... and probably won... to get these tickets).  It was not Julie or Serenity.  It was me.

Don't get me wrong, I was happy to suggest they offer up the ticket to someone else.  Heck, I got us a really great hotel room at the Tampa Edition.  It had a Michelin star chef.  An amazing bar, a welcome cocktail with a lavender spritz and their gin brewed specifically for the hotel, not to mention a Rum bar, and to top it all off an in house spa.

My offer was that they could go to the show, I would go to the spa and get a massage, go to one of the restaurants and eat some food, go to the bar and get some drinks, then head to the pool where they had a pool side bar, take a nap, wake up, go grab some more drinks, and wait for them to get back so they could tell me all about it.

As you can tell from the pictures my offer was refused.  We had a great time.  There were songs we sang along to, that we danced to, and it was a spectacle.  It cannot be said that Ms. Swift puts on one helluva show.  She performed for 3 hours straight and sang 44 songs from 9 different albums and 2 surprisesongs.

On Saturday morning we woke up, had a really nice brunch at The Pearl and made our way back to Orlando so I could pick
up my race packet for the Run Disney 10 Miler.  I will be honest Dear Reader, I forgot I signed up for this race until the week before.

I have picked my running back up post injury, but had not been training on longer races.  Normally my long Disney Races are half marathon's, 13.1 miles or 21 K, this was a 10 mile run or roughly 16K.

Those 3.1 Miles or extra 5 K's make a difference.  Seriously.  That is normally the part of that race where I hit a wall.  Not literally.  In running when you hit a wall is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.  It makes that the most difficult portion of the race.

By not hitting that wall I was never truly fatigued during the race.  I was able to keep my run-walk-run-walk method going and averaged 8 minutes per kilometer and finished in 2 hours and 11 minutes. 

At home we my lovely wife was home busily preparing for my Mother-In-Law's 77th birthday!!  I love my Mother-In-Law Judy.  She is an incredible woman.  My brother's-In-Law, my nieces, and one of my nephews made it over.  However the star of the show was my baby grand-niece.  No pictures, but she is the most beautiful and adorable little girl.  She is six months old and in a very fun phase where she is not yet walking, but alert, attentive, and very opinionative.  You knew what she liked and didn't like!  The party was great and seeing family was the cherry on the cake.  

Like I said, busy weekend.  Now let's recap last week!!

WEDNESDAY 4-12-2023

On Wednesday we dropped the demo heavy companion to last weeks video SQL Server Internals: HEAPS VS. CLUSTERED INDEXES!. 

This was a really fun video to make, and I'm hard at work on this weeks content which will be a fun video about Azure SQL and how it utilizes space.

TUESDAY 4-11-2023

Tuesday was a great show.  We started off the Community Round Table with a side conversation about being a parent and giving the magic of wonder to our children.  Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) reminisced about Castle Greyskull with me from our childhood.  Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) talked about when he gave his kids the gift of iPhones!  Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) talked about an AMAZING Christmas where his father hung his the Star Wars ships he received from the ceiling like they were flying!

We also covered AMAZING Azure Data Community content from the creators.  Here's the content in order of appearance:

Neeraj 

Unleashing the capabilities of Azure Synapse Analytics for a healthcare customer  by Prabhjot Kaur Twitter @PrabhKaur 

Bradley 

Using Azure Data Factory to read and process REST API datasets by Rayis Imayev Twitter  @RayisImayev 

Andres 

Announcing registries in Azure Machine Learning to operationalize models and pipelines at scale by Manoj Bableshw  Twitter @manojsb 

Josh 

Common Azure Synapse Link for SQL storage permission issues by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant 

Neeraj 

Create a Data Solution on Azure Synapse Analytics with Snapshot Serengeti - Part 1 -  by Josh Ndemenge Twitter @Jcardif254 

Bradley 

EightKB Topics  by Andrew Pruski Twitter  @dbafromthecold 

Andres 

Understanding Chaos Engineering by John Engel-Kemnetz Twitter @jkemnetz 

Josh 

Armchair Architects: Data Mesh Architecture by David Blank-Edelman Twitter @otterbook  

Neeraj 

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work  by Jared Spataro Twitter @jared_spataro 

Bradley 

How to work with ChatGPT in Visual Studio Code  by Daniel Calbimonte via SQL Server Central Twitter  @dcalbimonte  @SQLServerCentrl 

Andres 

From YOLO to YOLOv8: Tracing the Evolution of Object Detection Algorithms by Abirami Vina  Twitter @abiramivina 

Josh 

Ultimate Guide to Citus Con: An Event for Postgres, 2023 edition Ultimate Guide to Citus Con: An Event for Postgres, 2023 edition  by Claire Giordano Twitter @clairegiordano 

WRAP IT UP

As we wrap things up a quick programming note.  We will be dropping an MS Tech Bits video TODAY on Cost Management by Neeraj & Andres!  Make sure to check that out when it goes live.

Tomorrow we have our Community Round Table show Live at 1 PM EST.  On Wednesday I will be with you for an MS Tech Bits on Azure SQL Database Shrinking Operations for Data & Log Files. 

We hope you have a wonderful week and make some time to hang out with us Dear Reader, if you did anything fun this weekend I'd 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 04-03-2023 & Easter

Hello Dear Reader!  Hopefully you had a great weekend.  This weekend was filled with gatherings.  On Saturday we gathered with friends and had a really nice Game Night.... where no games were played and it was just perfect.  

It had been so long since we all gathered that we ate taco's, made some movie plans, watched hockey, and just generally enjoyed one another's company.  The food theme was tacos, my compliments to the many chef's.  Mere descriptions alone will not do it justice but there was homemade taco meat, refried beans, melted cheese, homemade rice & black beans, fresh guacamole, and some of the best chocolate chip cookies ever.

The following day was Easter.  My parents joined Sue, the kiddos, and myself.  Even though the kids are 19, 18, & 13 years old respectively.  Yet, they are never too old for an Easter basket!  When I was over in Wales & London for SQLBits I love to get candy for Easter.  There are so many amazing options to choose from and the fact that it is just slightly different, but oh so delicious, adds an element of wonder and amazement.

Some of my favorite Dad things to do are when we prepare for Christmas or Easter.  I also love some of the little things.  When the kids were small I loved making lunches. Making sure to add cinnamon apple sauce, snack cakes, some type of gummi snacks, making sure they each had their own individualized sandwiches. Serenity's favorite was a peanut butter and sliced bananawith no crust, I prefer the crust on mine.  All of those small things, that they are too big for now.

Lots of wonderful happy memories Dear Reader, the most important thing is to be present in the moment and love the people around you.  Alright, enough reminiscing.  Grab a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup shaped like an Easter Egg because it's time to bounce over to the re-cap!

WEDNESDAY 04-05-2023

On Wednesday we released our latests MS Tech Bits diving into the structures of Heaps and Clustered Indexes.  Why do we have the VS. on the slide?  The default table type in Oracle is a Heap, the default table type in SQL Server is a Clustered Index.  For years therese were the two most dominiant relational database systems and having different default recommendations creates confusions.

 

It's importiant to remember what we've learned from Ted Lasso.  "All people are different people", "Be a goldfish", also that tip about the peanut butter was pretty good and I would recommend the White Chocolatey Wonderful. I digress, all databases are different databases.  Some may be based off of ACID some are not, but indexing structures in SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle are all things you need to understand.

It affect performance and every day functionality.  So we dive into the conceptual structures in this video, demos are coming this week!

TUESDAY 04-04-2023

On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table!  The wonderful Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABullDog) was in for Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padillia (Twitter | @nodestreamio), and myself had a great day talking about the AMAZING content created by the Azure Data Community.

No time to waste, here is that wonderful content in the order it was covered on the show:

Dan

• DBA in training: SQL Server high availability options  by Pamela Mooney Twitter @PamelaMooney

Bradley

• T-SQL Tuesday #160: Round-Up  by Damien Jones Twitter  @amazonwebshark

Andres

• Edge AI: From Model Development to Deployment   by Raj Prasanna Ponnuraj

Josh

• Faster training and inference using the Azure Container for PyTorch in Azure ML  by Bea Stollnitz Twitter @beastollnitz

Dan

• [How-To] SSRS migration by Garry Bargsley Twitter @gbargsley

Bradley

• The Kingdom of AdventureWorks Calls for Aid - Asad Khan, Bob Ward, Sanjay Mishra & Buck Woody by  SQLBits,  Asad Khan, Bob Ward, Sanjay Mishra & Buck Woody Twitter @SQLBits, @Bob_Ward, @BuckWoodyMSFT, @AzureSQL 

Andres

• Create AI tracking Drone using DJI Tello  by Murtadha Bazli Tukimat  Twitter @RobotAndCode

Josh

• Single Server to Flexible Server Migration tool is GA in Azure Database for PostgreSQL  by Shriram Muthukrishnan  Twitter @azureDBpostgres

Dan

• How To Learn Microsoft Azure in 2022 by Thomas Maurer Twitter @ThomasMaurer

Bradley

• Power BI datasets CI/CD (the easy-ish way) by Stephanie Bruno Twitter @StephTBruno

Andres

• Amazing Invention-This Drone will change everything by Mark Rober  Twitter @MarkRober

Josh

• GitHub Codespaces for Students and Educators  by Nehemiah Emmanuel  Twitter @devgenix

WRAP IT UP.... AND SQL SATURDAY JACKSONVILLE!!!

This week we have the Community Round Table on Tuesday at 1 pm EST.  Join us to see the Azure Data Community blogs & videos we will be featuring.

On Wednesday we will have our MS Tech Bits, this will be the Demos that accompanied last weeks conceptual ideas about indexes!

SQL Saturday Jacksonville is just under 1 month away!! All of the Tales from the Field crew will be at the event.  Make sure to come to Daniel, Neeraj, & my pre-con A Full Day of DBA Fundamentals.  The full event schedule is LIVE!!

This will be a fun week, we hope you have a great one!  And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad