SQLBalls: October 2022

Monday, October 31, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-24-2022

Hello Dear Reader! This past week was an extremely fun time over at the Tales From The Field show! Fall is here, the leaves change and fall in Florida very quickly, & today is Halloween!!! Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. It is also my daughter's birthday, which makes it extra special!

This is my favorite holiday because everyone can participate in the holiday, the cost to celebrate is low, & everyone is there to give freely. We will be giving out candy bags, and the house is decorated in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme!

Decorated while I listened to Wrexham AFC streaming in my earbuds. Nothing better than listening to Mark Griffiths (Twitter | @m_griffiths92) talk about the pies or bursting my ear drums as Paul Mullin scores away!

Hopefully all of you will have a fantastic, candy filled, costume wearing day today!

"So Balls", you say, "what happened on the show last week!?!".

Ahh, thank you Dear Reader for keeping me on track! Off to the recap!

TUESDAY OCTOBER 25TH

We had the great Karen Lopez (Twitter | @DataChick) on the show. Karen is an 11 time Microsoft Data Platform MVP, a NASA Datanaut, & a Senior Project Manager & Architect at InfoAdvisors. As the world re-opens and we look at traveling for work and conferences again, we discussed Tips & Tricks as well as #KarensTravelStories.

Josh hosted the show. I shared the crazy story of my bachelor party flight to New Orleans, somehow I was disqualified, Andres WON!! Andres will be the host next Tuesday!! There was something weird going on about Andres, Josh, and a VENMO payment.... let's just say Dear Reader, I have my suspicions.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 27TH

We had Chris Ayers (Twitter|@Chris_L_Ayers) join us for the Community Round table on Thursday.

Chris is a Senior Azure FastTrack Customer Engineer that is DevOps & Developer focused. Chis is part of the same FastTrack team that Neeraj, Josh, Andres, & myself are all part of. We talked about DevOps Days Tampa Bay 2022 and some of the upcoming presentations and events Chris has planned.

We covered a ton of great content on the show, here's a summary of the posts:

Neeraj

a. MY BEST 61 TRAVEL TIPS TO MAKE YOU THE WORLD’S SAVVIEST TRAVELER by Nomadic Matt Twitter @nomadicmatt

Bradley

a. Starting with brand new Azure AD Lifecycle Workflows – Part 1by Pim Jacobs Twitter @PimJacobs89

Josh

a. The Points Guy by The Points Guy Twitter @thepointsguy

Andres

a. Deriving real-time intelligence about the physical world with Azure Percept and Azure Digital Twins by Nabeel Muhammad Twitter @abrsazi

Neeraj

a. Parallelism in SQL Server Execution Plan by Amhad Yaseen Twitter @AhmadZYaseen

Bradley

a. Synapse Delta Lakehouse and Power BI Enterprise Big Data Worked Example. Part 1: Start With the End in Mind by Rishi Sapra Twitter @rsaprano

Josh

a. Tech Conference Travel Tips by Una Kravets Twitter @Una

Andres

a. Securing access to Azure Data Lake Gen 2 from Azure Databricks by Nick Hurt Twitter @Nicholas_Hurt

Neeraj

a. More Consistent Execution Plan Timings in SQL Server 2022 by Paul White Twitter @SQL_Kiwi

Bradley

a. Mastering DP-500: Synapse Serverless SQL and file types – the ultimate guide! by Nikola Ilic Twitter @DataMozart

Josh

a. 16 Short Funny Travel Stories That'll Make You Laugh Out Loud by Jessie Festa Twitter @JessonaJourney

Andres

a. Best practices for designing a Microsoft Sentinel or Azure Defender for Cloud workspace by Tiander Turpijn Twitter @TianderTurpijn

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader it's time to land this plane. Put your tray tables in their upright and locked positions, take small children by the hand, and DON'T FORGET we are live this Tuesday & Thursday at 1 pm EST! Comment on the stream on any of our Twitter pages, Youtube Show page, or my Linkedin page as we are streaming and your comments will make it onto our show!

As always Dear Reader, thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Monday, October 24, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-17-2022

Hello Dear Reader! I hope you had a fantastic weekend. This weekend we celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary, my oldest daughter flew into town for an early birthday, & my oldest son came home from college for all the festivities. Needless to say it was a SUPER BUSY weekend. Lots of driving, good times and laughs.

"So Balls", you say, "super happy for you, but what happened on the show last week!"

Thank you Dear Reader, keeping me on track as always.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 18TH

We had an amazing week on Tales from the Field. We kicked off the show with our special guest Jes Schultz (Twitter | @grrl_geek). Jes is a Sr. Program Manager on the Azure Data Tools & Experiences Product Group. She had a great opportunity to for those looking to participate in a focus group on the future of the Query Editor for Azure SQL Database. If you are interested in participating, click here.

We played the hosting game. Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) couldn't be with us so Hope Foley (Twitter | @hope_foley) graciously filled in for Josh. Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) hosted. Our topic was on Interviewing Trick's & Tips. We discussed great things for people to keep in mind when they are interviewing, and tips we've used along the way. Not only did Hope fill in for Josh, but she WON! Josh didn't even show up and he managed to beat Andrés Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio ) and myself. That's the way it works, and Josh will be host next Tuesday!!!

THURSDAY OCTOBER 20TH

Thursday was our Community Round table. Once again, we gathered together. Josh was with us this time, and we reviewed the great posts that YOU the community put together.

Here's the links from the content covered on the show:

Josh

a. Restore or copy an Azure SQL Database with resource tags by Hugo Calzada Martin

Bradley

a. Azure Networking: Identify NSGs without NSG Flow Logs and Traffic Analytics configured with Azure Monitor Network Insights by Wim Matthyssen Twitter @wmatthyssen

Neeraj

a. interviewing — Ask a Manager -- all your interview questions answered by Alison Green Twitter @AskAManager

Andres

a. Demystifying Data Explorer by Gilles L'Hérault

Josh

a. Too Many Plans for the Same Query Hash by Eitan Blumin Twitter @EitanBlumin

Bradley

a. Announcing the new Ebsv5 VM sizes offering 2X remote storage performance with NVMe-Public Preview by Priya Shan

Neeraj

a. Steps in the Interview Process: What to Expect | Career Sidekick by Biron Clark Twitter @BironClark

Andres

a. Starting with Azure SQL Edge on Raspberry Pi by Hasan Savran Twitter @SavranWeb

Josh

a. Azure AD Connect: What to know about In-place Upgrade from version 1.0 to 2.0 ? by Sabrina Kay Twitter @oh_is_sabrina

Bradley

a. Preparing for the SQL PASS Summit by Edwin Sarmiento Twitter @EdwinMSarmiento

Neeraj

a. Top 12 Job Interview Tips and Tricks by Alison Doyle Twitter @AlisonDoyle

Andres

a. 5 Ways to Boost Query Performance with Databricks and Spark by Kash Sabba

WRAP IT UP

Great week last week, and this week is looking really amazing as well. I hope you will join us on the show. You can comment on any of our twitter pages where the show will be broadcasts, or on my Linkedin Page, or comment on our YouTube live stream and your comments will make it onto the show! The show is 1 pm Eastern Time US, on Tuesday's and Thursdays.

Hope to see you there Dear Reader, and as always. Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Monday, October 17, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-10-2020

Hello Dear Reader! We had a big week on Tales From The Field! We've got some great stuff planned for you this week, but before we get to the Live shows tomorrow 10/18 & 10/20, I wanted to do a quick recap of last week.

Ignite is always an exciting time, announcements are in the air, and we have truly arrived at what I like to call Fall Conference season. This is a lot like pumpkin spice season, but technology flavored. ...it still has a lot to do with Starbucks as we are all in line to get coffee.

Ignite returned to an in-person gathering at the Washington State Convention Center for the first time since 2019 when it was in Orlando. I always love when it is in-person. Hopefully, we have more in person with a streaming component next year. It is really impowering to allow the millions at home who cannot attend in person to attend remotely.

All right enough talk, let's get to the shows!

TUESDAY 10/11 SHOW

Last week was Microsoft Ignite and we kicked off our show with TWO big guests. We had Niko Negebauer Sr. PM from the Azure SQL Managed Instance Product Group, (Twitter | @NikoNeugebauer) join us on the show! For years Niko was a Microsoft MVP, contributing to the community as a chapter leader, Presidente of the TUGA in Portugal, a PROLIFIC & amazing blogger. Presenter at many international conferences, and user groups.

We also had Anna Hoffman, (Twitter| @AnalyticAnna) Sr. PM from the Azure SQL Data Platform join us! Anna is a Data Scientist, The Host of Data Exposed, the co-host of Something Old Something New which is a series about the math behind data science & how it applies to Azure ML, presenter at International conferences, one of the most recognizable faces in the world of Azure Data.

I was the host! Neeraj won!! We discussed our favorite Ignite experiences and Niko flipped the scripted and asked us questions. Check it out at the link above.

THURSDAY SHOW

On the Thursday show we had the Community Round table and covered Community & Ignite content all in on location. Here's a summary of what we covered on the show:

Josh

a.10 for 10: My 10 Favorite SQLPerformance Posts by Aaron Bertrand Twitter @AaronBertrand

Bradley

a. On the Floor of Microsoft Ignite: Day 1 Announcement Thoughts by Joey D’Antoni Twitter @jdanton

Neeraj

a. Microsoft Ignite 2022: What to Expect from This Year’s Event by Joe Kuehne Twitter @BizTechMagazine

Andrés

a. Azure IoT Edge Integration with Nvidia Deepstream by Emmanuel Bertrand Twitter @emmanuel_B_V

Josh

a. The Dangers of Dynamic SQL and How to Avoid Them by Rob Farley Twitter @rob_farley

Bradley

a. Microsoft Ignite 2022 – Azure Data Platform Update by Wolfgang Strasser Twitter @wstrasser

Neeraj

a. Ignite 2022- New Features and Updates for Ignite 2022 by David Allen Twitter @onmsft @davidpaj1978

Andrés

a. High Performance Real Time Object Detection on Nvidia Jetson Tx2 by Prof. Lee Stott Twitter @lee_stott

Josh

a. Stop Using Production Data for Development by Thomas LaRock Twitter @SQLRockstar

Bradley

a. Azure SQL and Azure SQL Managed Instance - Backup retention polices Loading … by Paloma Garcia Martin Twitter @PalomaGarcia40

Neeraj

a. Introducing-rankx-in-dax by Marco Russo Twitter @marcorus

Andrés

a. Microsoft Ignite Big Book of News

Josh

a. New PowerBI Implementation Guidance by Melissa Coates Twitter @SQLChick

Neeraj

a. Incremental Refresh and Hybrid tables in Power BI: Load Changes Only by Reza Rad Twitter @Rad_Reza

Bradley

a. Introducing assessment tooling for Oracle database migration to Azure SQL and PostgreSQL- Preview by Neel Ball

WRAP IT UP & SHOUT OUT

We love our Sr. Escalation Engineers at Microsoft. These folks are our hero's and our firefighters. When you have a big issue, you call and put in a ticket. These are the folks that come in when that ticket is escalated. One of the blogs that we featured was by Paloma Garcia Martin and she was so kind to give us another Shout Out on their team blog last week!

Speaking of, what a GREAT TEAM BLOG!! It is the Azure Database Support Blog and you should go and check it out!

More guests and more great content to come this week, hope to see you there! And as always, thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Friday, October 7, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up

Hello Dear Reader!

It's been a while. I've been busy working with a few colleagues on our show Tales from the Field. This has been a learning experience.

I've had to brush off some old skills on graphic design, bone up on some new skills namely how to run a YouTube channel & Video Editing!

This week we had two amazing shows. First up was our Tuesday show where the Hosting Duties are on the line!

Let me quickly back up, the Tuesday show is a bit of a game. We have a Host. The Host pick's the topic. The Host then awards points or deducts points based on how we do.

Sometimes we also have a guest. Our guest this week was Bradley Schacht Principal Program Manager from the Azure Synapse Analytics Product Group.

"But Balls", you say. "What's a Product Group?"

GREAT QUESTION Dear Reader!! At Microsoft teams that produce products are in our Engineering Organization, and they produce a product for example SQL Server, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory. Each of those teams are called Product Groups. So when I say, "Someone is a member of <insert product here> Product Group", that means they work on the team that builds or shapes the future of that product.

These are the people you want to know. Bradley joined the Tuesday show and as the guest he also gets to award points. Whoever has the most points, wins the hosting duties, and will be the host for the next show and they will pick the topic.

So on Tuesday Hosting Duties were on the line and I WON!! Here's a link to the show below.

This is exciting because next week is Microsoft Ignite, don't forget to sign up it's free!! So I get to host next week, pick the topic. Plus we have TWO special guests. Anna Hoffman, host of Data Exposed, & Niko Neugebauer from the Azure SQL Managed Instance Product Group!

On Thursday we had Hope Foley guest host for my buddy Josh Luedeman. Josh was out with a bad case of Pizza is better than Ninja's..... best explained by this clip from the Tuesday show.