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.  

No further delays, lets get to the content in the order of appearence:

Neeraj

• Roll with us at SQLBits 2023! - Microsoft Community Hub by Marisa Mathews Twitter @MarisaMathews @AzureSQL

Bradley

• Creating an Azure SQL Private Link Endpoint and managing DNS By John Lunn  Twitter @jonnychipz

Andres

• Parameters and Hyperparameters in Machine Learning and Deep Learning by Kizito Nyuytiymbiy  Twitter @KizitoNyu

Josh

• Scale Multiple Azure SQL databases on a logical server  by Laith Ayesh

Neeraj

• Azure Synapse analytics (dedicated SQL pool) data modelling best practices  by Bhaskar Sharma Twitter @sharmabhaskar

Bradley

• Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics Book  by  Thomas LaRock  Twitter @SQLRockStar

Andres

• How to Write Better Prompts for Chat GPT  by Derek Slater Twitter @GripRoom

Josh

• Code Reuse with Spark Functions for Azure Databricks  by John Miner Twitter @JohnMiner3

Neeraj

• Appreciation Posts for Engineers Day Across Globe  by Muskaan Sabarwal Twitter @MuskaanSabarwal

Bradley

• SQL Server Wait Statistics (or please tell me where it hurts…)  By Paul Randal Twitter @PaulRandal

Andres

• ChatGPT-3 Prompt Engineering  by Matt Nigh Twitter @literallynigh

Josh

• Monitoring PgBouncer in Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server  by Varun Dhawan Twitter  @iVarund

WRAP IT UP 

As I type this I'm crossing the Atlantic Ocean to head back home.  I don't know that there is anything left for me to say.

Tuesday we have the Community Round Table & Wednesday we will be dropping our MS Tech Bits.  I'm ready to lean this seat back and get some rest.

Have a great week Dear Reader, be good to one another.  And as always, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad