Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-08-2023 Mother's Day, Big News for MS Build, & the recap

 Hello Dear Reader!!  We also have some really, really, BIG NEWS for next week!  It also happens that next week is Microsoft Build, make sure to register for free!  But that news is coming a little later today.

What's that..?  I can't drop a teaser at the begining and then not give you a little more?  That's fair.

...OK Dear Reader here's a sneak peak.  

We have not one, but TWO one hour live shows that will be on Wednesday May 24th & May 25th.  We also have TWO big guests.  

Brad Schacht (Twitter |@BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse Product Group AND Adam Saxton ( Twitter | @AWSaxton) aka one half of @GuyInACube will be there.  But that's really all that I can say until a bit later.  Other than, this is going to be fun & this is going to be BIG.  Enough about the future let's talk about last week.

This past week was Mother's Day, happy belated Mother's Day to all the Mom's out there!  My parent's 50th wedding anniversary was this past year.  My siblings and I teamed up to buy them a cruise to Europe and they are out having a wonderful time!!  Because of this Mom was not here this Mother's Day but there are plenty of Mom's to be recognized in the family, more than just those that we get to see locally.  My niece had her first Mother's Day, congratulations Destiny!!  To celebrate we did what has become an annual tradition.  I make mimosa's, we take the ladies to the spa, and we all get pedicures.

Let's start with the mimosa recipe because it is a good one:

• 1/3 a champagne flute of Orange Juice
• 1/2 oz Don Julio Blanco tequila
• 1/2 oz Gand Marnier Cognac & Orange Liqueur
• fill remaining flute with good champagne like Veuve Clicquot

The pedicures started as a simple thing.  I took my wife and her Mom, my amazing mother-in-law Judith Gonzalez to get a pedicure and manicure.  The next year my Mom & youngest Sister came over and I included them.  Instead of just sitting there waiting I decided to join them for the pedicure and the tradition began. 

The next is that every year I get the kids to help me cook Mother's Day brunch.  The main course was by request.  Heart shaped chocolate chip pancakes.  I don't do anything simple.

In my house bananas are enjoyed by all.  So I made a banana's foster's syrup to go with the pancakes.  For this recipe you need banana's, butter, brown sugar, good dark rum (we used my Diplamatico), and maple syrup. 

You make banana's foster, flambe, then you add in the maple syrup and stir, finally ladling over finished pancakes.  Quick tip, the syrup is hot so if you cut fresh unsalted cream butter and put it on the pancake, then pour the syrup, the butter will be perfectly soft when the plate lands on the table.

Pedicures, pancakes, mimosas, all complete I set about fixing a toilet at the new house and installing a bidet.  All in all a very productive weekend.  Dear Reader, I hope you and your family had a great and Happy Mother's Day.  Ok, on to the recap.

MONDAY 05-08-2023

On Monday Andres Padilla (Twitter | @NodeStreamIO) & Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) presented Computer Vision using Azure ML Studio!!  

In this video Andres walk through the steps to connect to Azure machine Learning Studio, Importing the required libraries, downloading the data, all the way through training your model.  

WEDNESDAY 05-10-2023

On Wednesday I released No-Code PERFORMANCE GAINS with Intelligent Query Processing in Azure SQL & SQL Server!!  I walk through 2 different ways to restore the World Wide Importers database into Azure SQL Database. 

Then we review how to provision a Serverless Azure SQL Database and why you want to use Serverless.  Using demos from Bob Ward's ( Twitter | @bobwardms) demos from his amazing SQL Server 2022 class that is available for free here!!  I then show how self-healing Persisted memory grant feedback works in Azure SQL Database by dropping the performance of a query from over 1 minute to less than 2 seconds!

This is in place for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server 2022 we just need to have our database compatibility level at 150 or above.

TUESDAY 05-09-2023

On Tuesday it's my FAVORITE half-hour of the week! The Azure Data Community Round Table with Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla, Neeraj Jhaveri, and myself.  We recapped the fun that we had at SQL Saturday Jacksonville.

After a conversation that covered Guardians of the Galaxy 3, The Flash, and Andre's amazing drone demo at SQL Saturday Jax we got to the real star of the show.  The content.  Here is the content covered on the show in the order of appearance:

Neeraj

• Microsoft Digital Event  by Tyler Mays-Childers, Guy in Cube Twitter @sposit & @GuyInACube

Bradley

• Using the New Open Source SQLCMD to Create Containers by Steve Jones Twitter @Way0utWest via @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

• Everything You Want to Know About Onnx by Janakiram MSV Twitter @janakiramm

Josh

• Four Different Ways to Incorporate Azure Synapse and PowerBI by Ginger Grant Twitter @desertislesql

Neeraj

• Build real-time dashboard with Power BI dataset produced by Azure Stream Analytics no-code editor  by Xu Jiang Twitter @xujx

Bradley

• Automating Database Maintenance on Azure SQL by Josephine (Branch) Bush Twitter @hellosqlkitty

Andres

• Supercharge Archive Content Discovery with ChatGPT and Azure Video Indexer  by Fardau Van Neerden Twitter @thefmister

Josh

• Building, Deploying, and Sharing a Remote Jupyter Book in Azure Data Studio  by Steve Hughes Twitter @dataonwheels

Neeraj

• Analytics Vidhya's Top 10 Blogs on Computer Vision in 2022  by Sanjana Rajpal Twitter @AnalyticsVidhya

Bradley

• The Blooming of AI Spring  by Patrick LeBlanc & Buck Woody Twitter @PatrickDBA & @BuckWoodyMSFT via @Spotify

Andres

• Microsoft’s New Azure Storage Mover Makes Cloud Migrations Easier  by Rabia Noureen Twitter @RabiaNoureen11 

Josh

• Monitoring SQL Server on Linux Part 1: Installing sysstat (Surviving Without Perfmon)  by Rick Lowe Twitter @dataflowe

WRAP IT UP

A couple of reminders this week.  Don't forget Dear Reader we have our Azure Data Community Round Table Tuesday 5/16 at 1 pm EST. Today we have an MS Tech Bits where our very own Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) walks us through how to use Ola Hallengren's scripts to set up Database Maintenance on Azure SQL Database using Azure Data Factory! 

Remember to stay tuned for that big news, and as always Dear Reader Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-06-2023

 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:

Neeraj

• What is Diversity & Inclusion? - Global Diversity Practice by Global Diversity Practice Twitter @gdptweets

Bradley

• Microsoft’s commitment to the data community By Jeremy Kadlec Twitter @MSSQLTips  

Andres

• The elephant in the room: How to write PySpark Unit Tests by Prashanth Xavier

Josh

• Structured Streaming in Synapse Spark by Ryan J Adams Twitter @ryanjadams

Neeraj

• Bing With AI: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Why Search Is Changed Forever by Joanna Stern Twitter @JoannaStern

Bradley

• Resolving Azure Data Studio's Identity Crises by Frank Boucher & Erin Stellato Twitter @fboucheros @erinstellato

Andres

• Combining the power of Optimum, OpenVINO™, ONNX Runtime, and Azure by The AI Show Live (Cassie Breviu, Akhila Vidiyala, Devang Aggarwal)

Josh

• SQL Server on Linux Install - The Basics by Phil Ekins Twitter @SQLPhilUK

Neeraj

• Black History Month: Why we celebrate it in February : NPR by Scott Neuman Twitter @ScottNeumanNPR

Bradley

• Sessions and Speakers by Numbers (SQLBits 2023!)  By Rob Sewell Twitter @sqldbawithbeard 

Andres

• Creating Azure Monitor alerts for Cosmos (and other databases) queries by Andre Dewes 

Josh

• SQL Server Transactional Replication by Gareth Newman 

WRAP IT UP

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.

Thanks,

Brad