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!
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!
Hello Dear Reader! We had a great last week on Tales from the Field. This weekend was also a really nice one. On Saturday a group of friends gathered to share some friendship, conversation, and remember a dear friend that is no longer with us at one of my favorite places in Orlando, Lee & Rick's Oyster Bar.
Lee & Rick's has been around since 1950 and it doesn't look like much has changed in that time. That's just the way I like it. My friends Juan, Dan Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Brad Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht), and myself had a great time.
That wasn't the only thing going on this past weekend as it was also Super Bowl day. That's sports ball for the non-sports followers. The one day of the year that even non-sports ball fans will at least watch the game to see some of the best commercials we will get all year. Not to mention the halftime show is always amazing. It did not disappoint! The game was incredible, two amazing teams playing their hearts out. Or as I would translate to my friend Buck Woody (Twitter | @BuckWoodyMSFT), one sports ball team sports balled better than the other sports ball team. Which is fairly normal.
On to the show!
Tuesday 2-7-2023
On Tuesday we had iAsia Brown (Twitter | @TechPicasso) Producer at X-Box Game Studios Publishing on the show! Neeraj had won and was the host this week. Our topic was Diversity and Inclusion. iAsia is a brilliant, wonderful, amazing human being. She is a Veteran of the US Airforce & the Marine Corps. and we THANK her for her service! Our discussions were wide ranging, poignant, and incredibly valuable.
I understand that this topic could be a trigger to many people because of current events. If that is the case please take the time to watch this show. When we make things better for everyone we open them up to have an amazing experience. Inclusivity opens new markets and individuals to capitalistic opportunities that they may not otherwise have access to.
If you feel I'm wrong, its not hard to find me and I am open to your feedback.
Wednesday 2-8-2023
On Wednesday we dropped our second February video for our MS Tech Bits! Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @nodestreamio) and Andres Padilla (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) share with us the Tips & Tricks for Azure Data Lake Gen 1 to Gen 2 Migrations.
This topic is a big deal! Andres worked with the PG to develop the program and work with some of our largest customers in the world to migrate off of ADLS Gen 1 to ADLS Gen 2. He and Neeraj share their experience and many links that will help you through this journey. Speaking of which, if this is a situations where you find yourself or your company finds itself, then you should DEFINITELY be working with our team Azure FastTrack CXP. We are a complimentary Product Group in Azure Engineering that works directly with customers on their move or adoption to Azure. Here's a link to a video on how you can engage with us!
Thursday 2-9-2023
On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring incredible content from you the community.
I could write more about what we did on the show but I'd rather share all the amazing content that we covered in the order of appearance:
We hope you will all join us this week, on Tuesday we have a BIG guest. No spoilers on who won and will be the host, but the one and only Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) from Guy in a Cube on the program on Tuesday at 1 pm EST.
I've known Patrick for well over a decade at this point in my life. He's an incredibly man and I cannot wait for the conversation!
Don't forget we will have another MS Tech Bit this Wednesday and as always the Community Round table will be live on Thursday.
We hope to see you there. And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.
Hello Dear Reader! Last week was a week we have been building towards since the launch of Tales from the Field. My favorite conference every single year, Live! 360. Live! 360 is 5 conferences in one. TechMentor, Visual Studio Live, Artificial Intelligence Live, Cloud & Containers Live, & SQL Server Live.
Much like the SQL community became the Microsoft Azure Data Community SQL Server Live is largely about the Data Community as a whole with sessions on Synapse, COSMOS, Azure Arc Data Services, SQL Server 2022, Power BI, and many other topics.
My favorite part about this conference is the organizers and the people who attend. Of course, a big bonus is I get to see friends of my and other Microsoft colleagues, and that is always incredible. But these organizers are something else. Everyone I get to come here immediately understands how great they are to work with, what an amazing job they do taking care of the attendees, the speakers, & the staff involved. I've been presenting at Live! 360 since 2012 at the first SQL Live event. The organizers have been the same this whole time. They are great people, that you just love to work with.
The audience at Live! 360 is also different than what I find at most community events. This is a much more developer & enterprise customer centric conference, and it forces you to look outside of the traditional DBA events. I started my technical life as a developer, and it is a chance to stretch my old technical skills.
This year I had some fun and created several videos where I was walking up each day. I will post those soon, and we have a big surprise for you this week when we will drop a whole lot of Live! 360 content on Thanksgiving Day!
"So Balls", you say, "When do we get to the wrap up?"
I hear you Dear Reader. Away we go!
SUNDAY 11-13-2022
This was a great event. My colleagues Josh Luedeman (@JoshLuedeman | Twitter), Buck Woody (@BuckWoodyMSFT | Twitter), & myself started the week by delivering our Hands on SQL Server Ground to Cloud workshop on Sunday!
If you didn't make it and would like to take the course, I have good news for you. The whole SQL Server Ground to Cloud course is posted on GitHub and you can access it here!
TUESDAY 11-15-2022
"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA BALLS!", you say. "What happened to Monday?".
I was busy working with customers and setting up the Microsoft Booth for the conference on Monday Dear Reader. There were great pre-con's underway by Davide Mauri (@mauridb | Twitter), Thomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar | Twitter), Karen Lopez (@DataChick | Twitter), and many more. We had a meet and great with speakers and attendees, dinner, then bed, because we had to be up early for the keynote!
Tuesday kicked off with a Keynote by Henk Boelman (@hboelman| Twitter) and Buck Woody AI for Good - Using the Intelligent Data Platform to Create Assistive AI.
During the keynote Buck started off by showing how he assisted the owner of a grocery store with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. We used Azure Synapse Link for Azure SQL Database to create a seamless workflow migrating OLTP data to our data warehouse. Buck then used Power BI in an Azure Synapse Analytics Workspace to generate reports going against the real time data.
That's great Henk replied. Buck helped the seller. Henk wanted to empower the shopper. He gave an example of someone with sight impairment. He show how to train a voice assistant, which was amazing and a little scary. He could then use that voice assistant, using his voice, to say anything he typed.
He then DELETED HIS DEMO TO SHOW US HOW TO REBUILD IT!! Talk about high stakes. I don't think Buck will complain about me typing in a demo again..... actually he will. He has. He has complained about me typing in a demo.
Henk then used ML Flow to train a synaptic model that could verify and describe items using a camera. He then created a work flow using both models so he could scan an item and use his voice assistant to read the contents. In this case a can of Sprite. It not only read the can, it read out the calories and ingredients!
But that's not all. Tuesday also had our LIVE SHOW! Yes, we were live from Live! 360 with special guest's Thomas Larock & Buck Woody!
I Hosted!!! Want to see who won? ....watch the video!
WEDNESDAY 11-16-2022
Wednesday started off with in a really nice way. There's this really great guy on the other side of the Pond named Hugo Kornelis (@Hugo_Kornelis| Twitter). Hugo is battling a really tough disease. He has blogged about it prolifically. He's a good man. He's a good friend. We all want him to get better. Some months ago another of his very good friends reached out to many of us, and we all spread the word behind the scenes and we all got t-shirts that said #TeamHugo. At our conference and the PASS Summit out in Seattle, many people wore a shirt and took pictures sending our love to Hugo on Wednesday.
My friend Ginger Grant (@DestertIsleSQL | Twitter) and I had our picture taken by Buck supporting our friend. Like I said really nice way to start off the day.
The majority of Wednesday was spent working in the Microsoft Booth and interviewing some people for this Thursday's show! Davide, Karen, and Alan Hirt (@SQLHA | Twitter) all amazing people in the own right, sat down with me for interviews. Lunch was the Bird's of a Feather luncheon where we sit with attendees and talk about anything they want to discuss. I had a full table and we had a lot of great discussions. Some performance tuning, some Azure related, some analytics, some Azure Security and Azure Policy based questions.
At the end of the day we had a quick dinner out, before heading back to the dessert luau.
At this luau Tom had insisted one of his co-workers go up and participate in the show. She repaid him by ensuring he would have to go up later. When his name was called, I could see him shrinking away. He clearly wanted to pull his hat down, and step further in the shadows so he would not have to go on stage. It was apparent. He really wanted this to pass over.
So I did what any good.... no scratch that, any truly great friend would do.
I held my hand up high and yelled at the top of my lungs, "HE'S RIGHT HERE! THOMAS LAROCK IS RIGHT HERE! IT'S OK I FOUND HIM."
Naturally, when he took the stage the next name called could not be found. The man on stage said he needed someone. Thomas leaned over and gave him a name. "BRADLEY BALL", the man bellowed.
I looked at Josh shrugged and said, "Yep. Seems fair.", and walked up to the stage. After that it was time to head back to the hotel room because I had to present at 8 am. Oh, if you want to see what happened, watch the video.
THURSDAY 11-17-2022
First session of the day was me presenting Indexing Internals for Developers & DBA's. The audience was amazing. We had almost 100 people in the room. Great crowd, great feedback, really wonderful follow up questions and conversations with attendees. My thanks to them, without attendees showing up in the room speakers cannot do what we do. Over half of my audience was developers, and I love it when we discuss concepts.
SQL Server is an application. It is written by developers. It is used by DBA's. We live it we breath it, but we should never forget it is an application. Developers & DBA's must work hand in hand to exchange knowledge in order to be successful in any enterprise. The best places I've ever worked have great interpersonal relationships that span IT teams. They have to. We all depend on one another.
Next up was the SQL Server Live! Panel Discussion: Azure Cloud Migration Discussion. Buck, Karen, Alan (filling in for Ginger), and myself were on the panel and Thomas was our host. This was a great Q & A with the audience were they asked us questions and we gave them answers. There were lot's of great questions from "how do I convince my boss to move to Azure", "does the fact that we are using M365 help us in a migration", to "what are the gotcha's", "what mistakes have you seen made", "what are the best strategies" were asked. Two people working for Microsoft PG's and two Microsoft Data Platform MVP's with over 25 years of being MVP's did our best to give out the answers.
Once again, amazing attendees!
Next up I presented Azure Synapse Serverless Pools: POLARIS DEEP DIVE. I love this session. This is a fun one where we discuss the architectural differences between Dedicated Pools and Serverless Pools. I show a bunch of demos, the last is a customized SQL Stress test against two external tables hitting the same object to show the concurrency scale of the Polaris engine on Serverless Pools.
Then we talk about some architecture patterns. I love giving this talk to user groups or conferences. Serverless Pools are one of my favorite new products to use in Azure Synapse. I wish I got a picture of the room and the great audience. Alas I did not, I was busy talking, answering questions, and having a good time with the crowd and I forgot to take a picture.
The final session of the day was the NEXT? LIVE! 360 Networking Event. Another event were we the speakers were 1:1 with the audience. Any attendee who wanted to come and ask us questions could. Questions we received! We had questions on data modeling, secure data centers, replication, SQL Server 2022 and why we should upgrade from SQL 2019, tips on migrating from SQL 2012 to 2022 including a discussion on how to use the Query Data Store, and more.
Here's a quick video summarizing the day!
All of that and we also had the Tales from the Field Community Round Table!! We recorded this last week because Josh and I were both delivering sessions during our normal broadcast time. Great discussion up front about Thanksgiving & Time travel.
Of course, OUTSTANDING content provided to the community from:
Hello Dear Reader! Last week was Halloween and I hope you all had a fantastic time. Halloween has long been my favorite holiday. The cost of participation is imagination, activity, or a couple of bags of candy. Anyone can do it. It doesn't hurt that my daughter's birthday is on Halloween which makes it extra special!!
This we had the house decorated, table set up outside to give out candy to the neighborhood kids, and my kiddos were old enough that none of them needed me to walk them around to other houses. This left me, for the first time in at least 19 years, sitting outside giving out candy.
I learned a few things. First, we need a lot more fans. Fans outside in Florida will create a cross section of air that will keep mosquitoes away. It is not so much for the temperature, although it was close to 90 degrees.
Second, it is possible to get stung by so many mosquitoes that you have an allergic reaction. To mosquito bites that led to a wonderful 3 am *asthma attack and hive like welts appeared on parts of my body..... that were covered in clothing and inaccessible to mosquitoes.
*Not to worry though, as a lifelong asthmatic I had my rescue and daily use inhalers. All that happened was I woke up, used them, made myself a cup of tea, watched RRR while my body relaxed, and my breathing returned to normal*
Third, and most important, I learned that maybe I just stay inside and give out candy next year.
"So Balls", you say, "what happened on the show?"
Right you are Dear Reader, keeping me on track! On to the show!
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
On Tuesday we had Pam Lahoud (Twitter | @SQLGoddess) Principal Program Manager from the Azure SQL Virtual Machine team as our special guest. Pam talked with us about some of the really cool announcements they have coming up at the PASS Summit.
We also talked about the IOPs advancements that have been made and are coming to Azure SQL Virtual Machines!! I wore a Spider-man costume. Our good friend Dan Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) guest hosted for Andres Padilla (Twitter | @NodeStreamio) as he will be out for the next few Tuesday shows. Our topic was a spooky topic for Halloween, technology fails! We had some great stories talking about epic failures, how we recover, stay calm, and most importantly learn from failure.
Speaking of failure, I was disqualified! AGAIN! Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) & Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) fought for the win. Neeraj won the show! Congratulations Neeraj!! Neeraj will be the host and pick the topic for our show on Tuesday.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 3RD
On our Thursday show we had 5 time Microsoft Data Platform MVP Matt Gordon (Twitter | @SQLatSpeed) on our Community Round Table.
Another week is spread out before us, and it looks to be a really great one. We hope that you have a wonderful week. Don't forget our shows are live on Tuesday & Thursday this week at our Tales from the Field Youtube channel at 1 pm EST.
We hope to see you there. As always Dear Reader, thank you for stopping by.
