Hello Dear Reader! After a weekend with a lot of activities, it was a down week here at Casa Balls. Woke up and walked a lot. I'm still not back to running. A groin pull is not something I've had a lot of experience with, yet it entered my life in December and I cannot wait for it to leave.
I miss running, last year I ran 755.1 kilometers. Right now I can walk, as long as my pace is not too quick, and I can ride a bike. The key is really to get out in the morning, take in some sunshine, and get the blood flowing.
If I can do that I find that helps put me in the proper headspace to be productive during the day. One of my favorite things as of late it take pictures.
In the morning I set out and take pictures as I walk around the neighborhood. Even when I did "run", it was actually interval running. The reason I note that is I tend to take pictures when I'm in the walking portion of my interval run. With the exception of my phone, I do not carry a camera on me. I still manage to get some really great pictures of the day.
So this weekend was a lot of walking, cooking, and hanging out. I hope you had a great weekend, and made it out to enjoy some time outside or inside amongst family and friend. On to the re-cap!
Tuesday 1-31-2023
On Tuesday we had Andrew Nathan (Twitter | @AndrewNathan05) Principal Engineering Manager from the Azure FastTrack Core team was our special guest. We discussed the Zero Trust Security imitative by Microsoft that all customers should consider when building their architecture. We also discussed International Travel Tips ahead of SQLBits! SQLBits is the largest Microsoft focused Data Community conference in Europe. This year it is Hybrid which means Dear Reader, if you cannot make it in person you could still attend this fantastic conference.
We played our hosting show, I was the host this week! Want to know who won? Check out the video above to enjoy the show and find out!
Wednesday 2-1-2023
NEW THIS YEAR! We will be dropping weekly technical content every Wednesday, our MS Tech Bits. This week it was my turn to produce a video. I was working with a friend and they wanted to know how to troubleshoot deadlocks they were experiencing. The first step in that process is understanding what is a deadlock and how to find them when they occur. So I made this video How to Monitor Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance to help.
This is a fun little video where I walk you through the process. Also there is a bit of an easter egg in this vide. If the shirt I'm wearing on the video looks familiar that's because I wore this in another blog post, and it means a lot to me.
Thursday 2-2-2023
On Thursday we had our Community Round Table. This is one of my favorite shows every week because we get to give a shout out to the great content producers in the community. People writing blogs, producing videos, or even GitHub repositories that help people get things done. It's just amazing.
Here's a list of the content featured on the Round Table in order of appearance:
And now we draw the blog to a close. We have a great line up this week! Make sure to tune in Tuesday at 1 pm EST for a very special guest. Wednesday we have our second MS Tech Bit coming up with my co-hosts Andres Padilla and Neeraj Jhaveri covering Tips and Tricks for Migrating Azure Data Lake Gen 1 to Gen 2.
On Thursday we will wrap up our week with our Community Round Table also at 1 pm EST. I hope you all have a wonderful week, 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! 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:
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!
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.
Back to Thursday. We had Hope Foley & special guest Lonnye Bower for the Community Round Table!
Sooo much great community content from the round table. Here's a list of that content!
