SQLBalls

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

Monday, March 20, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-13-2023 & SQLBits 2023

Hello Dear Reader! What an incredible week we had. I started off traveling on Monday of last week. At the airport I ran into my friend David Pless ( Twitter | @dpless), he and I were on the same flight to London! It was great to start off the trip hanging out with a good friend.

After landing Tuesday morning, I took the Tube to Padington Station, then the Great Western Railroad out of London heading to Newport Wales.

There is a Rail Strike occuring in the country right now. That added a bit of tension to travel days as we did not know if trains would be running or not. One day your train would not have any issues, the next you would recieve alerts that your service may be disrupted. Luckily I did not experiance any issues with trains, but the drama hung in the air all week long for everyone.

SQLBits was taking place at the Newport Wales ICC. It was a fantastic venue, for more on that take a look at the shorts which started with a walk up and grew to be a review of the days events at SQLBits.

I was hustling to get out there because I was assisting with an amazing pre-con being put on my by Azure FastTrack Product Group, PG, colleague Stijn Wynatts (Twitter | @SQLStijn), Filip Popovic & Mark Pryce-Maher from the Microsoft Azure Synapse PG, & Mr. Simon Whiteley (Twitter | @MrSiWhiteley) Microsoft MVP for Lakehouse in a Day! I was one of the people walking around and assiting others. I did that straight up until our Tuesday show.

Wednesday I assisted with Bob Ward (Twitter | @BobWardMS), Marissa Matthews, and Buck Woody's training day, The SQL Server 2022 Workshop. It was a PACKED room. We had over 120 people sign up and we needed multiple additional tables. We did a lot of hands on work, I know if you where there chances are I helped you do it at some point! It was another fantastic day of learning. After that we went to a Girlguiding, Welsh Girl Scouts, volunteering event with other Microsoft Employees and Microsoft MVP's. We helpd to pick up litter and keep some of their fields and facilities clean. This was just good for our souls. It was wonderful to meet people from Newport and work along side them. This was hands down my favorite event that we did this week. Which is high praise, because this week was amazing.

I will get more into the work done in the updates below, but it was a wonderful and exhausting day that would end with myself in the Auditorium presenting with none other than Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA). Saturday Patrick & myself presented on The Most Powerful Azure Service that You've Never Heard of.

Intruged?

Let's head over to the recap.

MS TECH BITS - MONDAY 3-13-2023 & WEDNESDAY 3-15-2023

On Monday my colleague Marco Aurelio Cardoso from the Azure FastTrack PG joined me to discuss OpenAI and Prompt engineering. We put this video together to showcase a partical application of how these services would be utilized. We also had some fun asking about the physical hygine of Master's of the Univers Characters as well.

Marco showed me how to create an Azure AI Chatbot that utilizes an OpenAI model to create an interactive Chatbot in a Slack Channel. We had a really good discussion about Responsible AI and the need to understand the source for the information that our model is returning.

Wednesday I had a video on how to set up a SQL Server 2022 Instance in Seconds, also it is free using the free version of Docker and SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition on a Docker Container.

There are some internal concpets regarding SQL Server that it is importiant to understand. Understanding how to stand up an evironment quickly to test out new features is a good skill to have and will be key for some of our futuer conversations.

SQLBits 2023 SHORTS

All this week I was making shorts videos recaping some of the activities of the conference. I'm only one human and could not make it to everything, but if you couldn't make it to SQLBits or if you want some nestolgia from the event please take a look.

Newport Wales ICC walk up to #SQLBits 2023 Training Day 2

SQLBits Behind the scenes Day 1 Keynote, Sessions, & Volunteer Event

EPIC SQLBits Costume Party, 5K Run, & General Sessions Day 2!!

Last Day at SQLBits 2023, Community Keynote, General Sessions, & Saying goodbye

As you can see this was an exceptional event. So many fantastic sessions, I cannot wait to go look at the SQLBits channel to find the sessions I missed and watch them when they are posted! Keep in mind SQLBits makes these sessions available for you to consume so make sure to check them out.

COMMUNITY ROUND TABLE - TUESDAY 3-14-2023

Buck Wood (Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT) joined Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Andres Padillia (Twitter | @nodestreamio), and myself. Buck and I were live from the SQLBits Conference.