Showing posts with label Tales from the Field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tales from the Field. Show all posts

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 LuedemanAndrés 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!

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, April 4, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-27-2023 & MegaCON

Zach's 1st MegaCon 2011
 Hello Dear Reader!  This past week is a blur.  It was a tough week at work.  That sentence is an understatement, but its really all I can say at this point.  Monday sent me for a tail spin.  I was fresh off a weekend relaxing with my wife, planning events with my friends, and thinking things were pretty well set.  Life has a way of suprising you.

We powered through last week, had our Community Round Table, and dropped our new content.  Internally at Tales from the Field we did some Camtasia training, explored some new technology, and started some planning for the next 3 months.  I'm excited about those things.  Before I knew it the weekend was upon us.

12 Years Later MegaCon 2023

I'm really tough to shop for, I hear that a lot around Christmas time.  I don't mean to be difficult, but if I want something I tend to buy it.  Books, collectibles, comics, whiskey, gin, ....I digress.  This year my wife did something exceptionally cool for me.  She bought me things to give me experiences, one of those was ticket's to MegaCON in Orlando.  She bought me floor passes & and extra pass to share.  

I shared mine with my oldest son Zachary.  My first MegaCon ever was with Zachary when he was 7 years old.  When it comes to comic book conventions I've only ever been to two and he was with me at both of them.  He enjoyed this so much, I think this is a must do again next year!

One of the things I've always loved it the effort people put into their costumes, how generous they are with their time, and a willingness to celebrate with others.  That was as true when he was a little kiddo dressed in a Superman t-shirt as it was this year when he was dressed as Eren Yeager this year.

I hope you had a good weekend out there Dear Reader!  On to the wrap up.


WEDNESDAY 03-29-2023

On Wednesday we dropped our MS Tech Bits, Turn SQL to KQL IN SECONDS with Azure Data Explorer.  This video is based off the demo I did with Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) in our Session at SQLBits (Twitter | @SQLBits).

I love Azure Data Explorer, it is an incredibly powerful service for digesting log data and querying massive data sets and returning results in seconds.  It has so many capabilities and possibilities.  BUT... I don't know KQL and I don't know if I want to learn another language.  Fear not as I show in this video you can use the EXPLAIN statement to translate SQL to KQL that you can then run against your data sets.

I'm hoping this leads to peopel realizing that the bar for entry to this service is low, if you know SQL then you know KQL!


TUESDAY 03-28-2023

On Tuesday I once again teamed up with Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), & Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) to review the AMAZING community content that you all produced!  If you missed that make sure to check it out.


The true star of the show is the content produced by the Community.  Here is the content in order that it was covered on the show:

Neeraj

Multi-Column Distribution for Dedicated SQL pools is now GA! by Mariya Ali Twitter @mariyaali

Bradley

How to use an Annotation in Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Analytics Data Integration Pipeline?  by Alpa Buddhabhatti Twitter  @AlpaB7

Andres

How to set up a Python virtual environment on Windows by Abhinav Saraswat 

Josh

Announcing the Release of Azure Data Studio 1.4.2  by Erin Stellato Twitter @erinstellato

Neeraj

Working with the GPT-4 and ChatGPT models on Azure by Derek Legenzoff Twitter @DerekLegenzoff

Bradley

What is Visual ChatGPT?   by  Andy Sansom 

Andres

Spark Monitoring  by Dustin Vannoy Twitter @dustinvannoy

Josh

Turn your database into an API in minutes with Data API builder for Azure Databases  by Jasmine Greenway Twitter @paladique

Neeraj

The Importance of SQL Saturdays  by Angela Tidwell Twitter @AngelaTidwell

Bradley

KQL Series – ingesting data with Azure Data Factory by Hamish Watson Twitter   @TheHybridDBA

Andres

Eliminate these 11 phrases that ‘make people question your credibility,’ says public speaking expert  by Christina Helena Twitter @christinahelena

Josh

Azure Podcast - Episode 455 - Azure ML in the Real World  by Azure Podcast Twitter @AzurePodcast


WRAP IT UP

This week we have our Community Round Table on Tuesday where we will once again feature content from you the Azure Data Community!  We will be live at 1 pm EST, but you can always catch us after the broadcast on our YouTube Channel.

Wednesday we will have a video discussing the internals of Heaps, Clustererd Indexes, & Non-Clustered Indexes!

Time to say goodbye until next week.  Hope you have a great week 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


Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-27-2023 & Some Changes

 Hello Dear Reader!  Change is the one constant in life and over here at Tales from the Field we've been
hard at work making some changes. 

Over the last 5 months since we kicked off the show we've been experimenting with different content.  We started off with the hosting & interview show on Tuesday and the Community Round Table on Thursday.

We added a few sporadic technical videos, and then in February kicked off our MS Tech Bits every Wednesday.

We are data folk at heart, so after looking at the analytics, we were blown away!  In just one month of technical videos we had almost doubled our subscribers, and our viewership.

While we produced 2 Live Shows per week, we received just as many views and almost doubled our subscribers with one technical video a week.

Out of the Live Shows the most popular thing we do is the Community Round Table, and it is our favorite thing!  We get to talk about you and what you are doing.  We get to shine a light on new voices, wonderful established voices, or voices that you may not be aware.  Each of my cohosts brings an amazing and unique point of view to this endeavor.   I love learning new things or getting new videos to check out thanks to Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri),  Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), & Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman). 

 I guess that is another change as well.  We appreciate the efforts of Daniel Taylor so much that he is now officially part of the team!  Dan is our go-to when we've had someone out of the office and he has an amazing technical mind.  We are lucky to have him as part of our crew.

We want to devote more time to producing technical videos. So this week we are moving our Community Round Table shows to Tuesday and we are pausing the interviews.

We will continue our focus on technical content and making sure that we are rolling out a few technical videos a week.

All based on the work we are doing with customers aka friends over "in the field", answering questions, or covering topics we've had to help our friends with.  A big important part of our job is also our internal work in Azure Engineering, also technically our field.  Hence our name, Tales from the Field.

This week and next week we will be adding a treat of Monday videos and some shorts relating to interviewing for SQL DBA jobs. 

In some fun news we've had the logo refreshed, some laptop stickers made prior to SQLBits & SQL Saturday Jacksonville #1041!  If you are attending those events and want a sticker please find me and I'm taking about 200 so find me I will be happy to share them!

After SQLBits we will be working on a new channel trailer, getting the logo incorporated into our header, and adding it to our video trailers.  We really love it and the graphic designer did a bang-up job!

Ok, enough from me.  On to the Recap!


TUESDAY 2-28-2023

We had the AMAZING Vicky Harp (Twitter | @VickyHarp) on the Tuesday show for an interview.  The subject was Building a Brand.  Vicky is a Principal Group Program Manager for the Windows Developer Experience Team, Vicky has also had a hand in building some of the product, that if you use SQL Sever, you know & love.


This was a fantastic episode were we discussed the concepts of external or community branding as well as internal or building your brand inside of the company you work for.  Both of these brands are ESENTIAL to success.

We covered advice and guidance that Vicky had for people new in their careers and also for those that had been around for a while.  Make sure you check it out!


WEDNESDAY 3-31-2023

On Wednesday we launched our latest MS Tech Bits Make Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose FASTER!!I  On a personal note, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE RESPONSE!  As of right now this is the MOST watched video on our channel and it has not yet been out a week.

If you liked this video, we have some really great content planned at the channel.  We hope you will check it out if you haven't already.



THURSDAY 3-2-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring data from you the Azure Data Community or the community at large. 


This is always a fun show where I get to hang out with my friends and share the things we've all found interesting over the past week.  The star of that show is the content, so without further ado.


Content in order of appearance:

Neeraj

The Importance of Personal Branding to Career Growth Plus 12 Tips for Branding Success by Jessica H Hernandez Twitter @GreatResume


Bradley

DataChick's Secure Your Azure SQL Data Challenge By Karen Lopez Twitter @DataChick


Andres

How To Fix Stream Lag: 5 Reasons You are Lagging by Live Streaming Tech Twitter @tech_streaming


Josh

Announcing Azure Data Tech Groups v2.0  by Rie Merrit Twitter @IrishSQL & @AzureSQL


Neeraj

Using OpenAI GPT in Synapse Analytics by Thomas Costers 


Bradley

Programming Databases with T-SQL for Beginners by Buck Woody & Marisa Mathews Twitter @BuckWoodyMSFT, @AzureSQL


Andres

Calling REST endpoints from T-SQL by Rob Farley Twitter @rob_farley, @IrishSQL, @AzureSQL


Josh

Understanding Change Data Capture for Azure SQL Database Part 1 by Greg Low Twitter @greglow


Neeraj

Personal Branding for Students: 7 Tips You Should Know by Nate Torres


Bradley

Extracting Data from the AFAS REST API with Azure Data Factory By Koen Verbeeck Twitter @Ko_Ver


Andres

How I Built A Streaming Analytics App With SQL and Delta Live Tables by Richard Tomlinson Twitter @tomlinsonr


Josh

SQL Server 2022: Measuring Extended Events Performance Impacts by Jonathan Kehayias Twitter @SQLPoolBoy



WRAP IT UP

This week is a big week Dear Reader. We have technical content dropping this Monday and next Monday.  This Monday we have an Introduction to OpenAI by Andrés & Neeraj!  We have our Tuesday Round Table show featuring maybe your content!?!  

We have our Wednesday MS Tech Bits, this will be yours truly with an Introduction to SQL Wait Stats and we are dropping our SQL Interview shorts all this week.

Most important, Thank You Dear Reader for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad

Monday, February 27, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-20-2023


Hello Dear Reader! We had a beautiful weekend here in Florida.  Spring is in the air, mainly because the temperature is ranging between 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  This has lead to some rather pronounced sneezing on my morning exercise routine.  The type of sneezing that has scared children and small animals.

It was a really nice weekend, enjoying the tale end of February before a busy March.

This was a good time to get some recordings done, have some outings with the Mrs., and meet the gentleman for a morning of golf.   I'm not good at golf, quite terrible actually. It is a good excuse to spend two hours with friends talking about life, family, and generally trading our perspectives on things.

As we say goodbye to Winter and begin to focus on Spring it seemed like last week was indeed the perfect way to send off February with a bang.

Off to the wrap up.


Tuesday 2-21-2023
On Tuesday we had a little bit of Christmas in February with out Elfster show.  Our good friend Lonnye Bower (Twitter | @ilovesql) had the brilliant idea to have a gift exchange!  Andrew Nathan (Twitter | @AndrewNathan05) & Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) were quick to sound off their excitement and we planned our eventual holiday extravaganza!  



We all were super excited for this.  No technical topics in this show, just a bunch of friends joking around, playing Secret Santa, and opening presents.  If you are looking for some fun and a laugh, please tune in.  This was a really fun time!


Wednesday 2-22-2023

On Wednesday we dropped our latest MS Tech Bits.  These are videos that will cover different Azure technologies and how you can incorporate them.  Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) & Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) walk us how to use BICEP templates from our GitHub repository to walk you through deploying Pattern 1 in order to deploy you Azure Synapse Analytics environment.       




This is a great video and it is just the start, personally I'm really looking forward to additions to this series.

Thursday 2-23-2023
On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring amazing content by you the Azure Data Community & sometimes great authors from our community at large!



Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) wore his hat from the Tuesday show, and we kicked off reviewing the content our team had seleted for the week.  But you don't want to here me talk about it, here are the links!

Links in order of appearence on the show:

Neeraj

Bradley
SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing By William McKnight & Jake Dolezal via gigaom Twitter @gigaom

Andres

Josh

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Josh

Neeraj

Bradley
json_object and json_array Functions SQL Server 2022 Tutorial  By Daniel Calbimonte Twitter @MSSQLTips

Andres

Josh


WRAP IT UP

We've got a big week planned this week.  Vicky Harp (Twitter | @vickyharp ) Principal Product Group PM Manager will be on the Tuesday show!

On Wednesday I have some MS Tech Bits that will be posted, on Thursday we have the Community Round table featuring data from the Azure Data Community, and it maybe featuring your content!  Let us know if you are writing a blog, producing a video, or doing something noteworthy in the community! 


As always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Monday, February 20, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-13-2023

Josh & myself at Antman & the Wasp Quantumania
 Hello Dear Reader!  It's the Presidents Day holiday today in America. With it comes a 3 day weekend.  To celebrate Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), myself, and our families went to see Antman & the Wasp: Quantumania over the holiday weekend.   

Despite the poor reviews on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was great.  Once again proving why I'm not a movie critic, and why I don't understand how movie critics have a job.  Have no fear, there are no spoilers here.  It was an exciting action-adventure with a really good family theme, and a surprisingly happy ending with a heavy bit of foreshadowing.  I enjoyed it so much I saw it the next day with my oldest son and it was just as enjoyable as it was the first time.

We headed over to visit family for dinner on Saturday, while Sunday was a nice lazy today I am using my
day off to learn a little more about video editing, pre-posting our next two MS Tech Bits , and learning about end screen YouTube pages.  My wife does not have the day off so I'm on dinner duty tonight!


"So Balls," you say "what's for dinner?".


Excellent question as always Dear Reader!  I have some ribeye steaks defrosting in the refrigerator.  I plan to make a homemade chimichurri, put half on the steaks, and vacuum seal them, then sous vide them, before finishing them off on the grill to get a nice char on the exterior.  But enough of us all getting hungry before lunch, let alone dinner, lets head off to the recap!


Tuesday 2-14-2023

Valentines Day kicked off with the Batman of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyInACube), Mr. Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) himself!  We had a great conversation about how to Manage Work Life Balance.  Part of that conversation has to involve admitting that we have not always done a good job of managing work life balance. 



Often it is times of trial and error, life, and loss that teach us that we have to do better.  On Thursday, our good friend Lonnye Bower (Twitter | @ilovesql) challenged us to call it a Life-Work balance, but I'm getting ahead of myself.



Wednesday 2-15-2023
First off thank you Dear Reader for the reception of our MS Tech Bits!  This is quickly becoming some of our most viewed content.  This past week was no exception.  In less than a week this has become our 2nd most viewed MS Tech Bits!



I'm working with some friend on the Azure SQL MI PG and we have videos that we will be cross posting helping people to further understand one of my favorite products Azure SQL Managed Instance.  In this video we show how to backup and restore a SQL MI DB from a SQL MI Instance and restore it on a SQL Server 2022 instance.

We do this in an unencrypted manner, but it is completely possible to do this in an encrypted manner.  We will cover that in a future video.  



Thursday 2-16-2023
On Thursday we kicked off our Round Table with our good friend Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) sitting in for Josh Luedeman.  Dan joined Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) to review the AMAZING CONTENT created by you the ccommunity!  



As I mentioned earlier Lonnye challenged us to stop referring to Work-Life balance and instead say Life-Work balance.  Bravo to Lonnye for pushing us to be better!


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

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan



WRAP IT UP
This week is the week Dear Reader!  Christmas in February, our Elfster show is happening.  Who got who?  What gifts did we each get?  We will finally find out Tuesday 2/21/2023 at 1 pm EST.  This will be a packed show, and it looks to be a lot of fun.

On Wednesday we have another great MS Tech Bits that will drop.  This time Andés and Neeraj are back for the first of what will be a series of videos teaching you how to use BICEP to deploy Analytics Pattern 1 for Azure Synapse Analytics using our Analytics in a Box GitHub repo!

Thursday we will be back with the Community Round table, potentially featuring your content!

Ok, time to rest up while I can.

Oh, one other thing.  We broke a milestone and it is all thanks to you Dear Reader.  We offically hit over 100 subscribers on our YouTube channel!  Thank you so much for joining us on this ride.

And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad