Showing posts with label Power BI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Power BI. Show all posts

Thursday, June 1, 2023

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 RenĂ© 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

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

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:







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


Monday, May 15, 2023

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 BIAzure 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 BallJosh LuedemanAndrĂ©s PadillaNeeraj 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

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

Andres

Josh

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



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

Monday, May 1, 2023

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




Monday, April 10, 2023

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

Josh

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 FundamentalsThe 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

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

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

William, right, 11 years ago the morning of our college tour
 Hello Dear Reader! When I got off the plane from SQLBits I wasn't feeling great.  To be honest, I was a little concerned.  I'm a diabetic asthmatic.  Some people are generally unconcerned when they get a cold, some even feel that way about Covid.  Not I.  

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

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

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

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

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

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


MS TECH BITS - WEDNESDAY 3-22-2023

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

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


COMMUNITY ROUND TABLE - TUESDAY 3-21-2023

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


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


Neeraj 

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


Bradley 

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


Dan 

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


Josh 

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


Neeraj 

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


Bradley 

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


Dan 

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

 

Josh 

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


Neeraj 

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


Bradley 

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


Dan 

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


Josh 

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

 

WRAP IT UP

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

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

And as always, Thank You for stopping by!

Thanks,


Brad


Monday, March 13, 2023

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:

 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