SQL Data Partners Podcast: Recent Episodes
Carlos L Chacon
Hosted by Carlos L Chacon, the SQL Data Partners Podcast focuses on Microsoft data platform related topics mixed with a sprinkling of professional development. Carlos and guests discuss new and familiar features and ideas and how you might apply them in your environments. Visit our website for episode show notes at sqldatapartners.com/podcast and leave a comment if you have a topic you think we should discuss. We’ll see YOU on the SQL Trail.
Companeros, all good things must come to an end. While the details of what is next is uncertain, my time with the podcast is coming to an end. A quick thank you and a glimpse of what is next.
In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, host Carlos L. Chacón is joined by Kevin Feasel and Eugene Meidinger for a deep dive into data governance and security within Microsoft Fabric. As part of Season 8’s focus on Fabric, the trio explores how governance tools and practices are evolving with Microsoft’s platform, including the use of domains, Purview integration, and the challenges that arise from pricing and tool fragmentation.
With their usual banter and insights, the hosts lay out foundational concepts around organizational data governance and highlight some key components Fabric offers out-of-the-box. They also candidly discuss gaps between marketing promises and real-world implementation—especially around documentation and administration. Whether you're building out your governance framework or trying to decipher where Purview fits in, this episode brings clarity and context with plenty of humor along the way.
We hope you enjoyed this conversation on data governance and security in Microsoft Fabric. If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 286: Data Governance and Security In Microsoft Fabric. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Fabric personas were originally designed to break down the various functional roles within Microsoft Fabric—such as Power BI, Data Factory, Data Activator, Data Engineering, Data Science, Data Warehouse, and Real-time Analytics—into more manageable, bite-sized sections. The goal was to prevent users from feeling overwhelmed by the platform’s breadth. However, this feature has since been discontinued, as it did not effectively communicate the seamless integration between these roles. Still, the underlying concepts can be useful when thinking about how you might approach Fabric from a functional standpoint.
Do you like the change on one large white canvas, or did personas have a use for you? Let us know in the comments below.
We hope you enjoyed this conversation on personas in Microsoft Fabric. If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 285: Who is Using Microsoft Fabric. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Once you have your data stored in OneLake, you'll be ready to start transforming it to improve it's usability, accuracy, and efficiency. In this episode of the podcast, Belinda Allen takes us on a delightful journey through Data Flows, Power Query, Azure Data Factory (Pipelines), and discusses the merits of shortcuts. We also learn about a handy way to manually upload a table if you have some static data you need to update.
There are many tools and techniques that can be used for data ingestion and transformations. And while some of these options we discuss will be up to individual preference, there are pros and cons to each. One of the blessings and curses of Fabric is that there are many ways of achieving the same result, so what you choose may depend on the nature of the data you have and your goals, but might also be dictated by personal experience.
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Belinda on ingesting and transforming data in Microsoft Fabric. If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 284: The Four-Letter Word ETL - Data Movement. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Microsoft Fabric offers two enterprise-scale, open-standard format workloads for data storage: Warehouse and Lakehouse. Which service should you choose? In this episode, we dive into the technical components of OneLake, along with some of the decisions you’ll be asked to make as you start to build out your data infrastructure.
These are two good articles we mention in the podcast that could help inform your decision on the services to implement in your OneLake.
- Microsoft Fabric Decision Guide: Choose between Warehouse and Lakehouse - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
- Lakehouse vs Data Warehouse vs Real-Time Analytics/KQL Database: Deep Dive into Use Cases, Differences, and Architecture Designs | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
We hope you enjoyed this conversation on the nuances of data storage within Microsoft OneLake! If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 283: Data Lakehouse vs Data Warehouse vs My House. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In Episode 281, we introduced Microsoft OneLake with a high-level overview. Now we're going deeper with a discussion on the Parquet format, why Microsoft went with the Delta Lake variation, and what Delta Lake format brings to the table (no pun intended). We'll also examine some "behind the scenes" aspects of file management, and why you'll still be using the GUI to create most of your objects.
Onelake is Microsoft's solution to the demand for centralizing all data in one location, eliminating the need to transfer it across multiple systems. We expect this to play out further however, when we consider scenarios like data sovereignty, geographical data distribution, separation of subsidiary data, and even departmental budgets that may necessitate multiple instances of OneLake.
We round out our OneLake deep dive with a conversation on the Direct Lake Mode option for importing data into Power BI and Eugene shares his perspective on why everyone may not be rushing to jump on the bandwagon just yet.
We hope you enjoyed this deep dive into Microsoft OneLake! If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 282: OneLake - A Deep Dive. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As you start using Fabric, having a central location for your data is crucial. OneLake acts as this unified destination, offering a single, consolidated repository for all your data. In this podcast episode, we explore the core features of OneLake and its benefits with our guest, Mariano Kovo, and discuss how it efficiently handles large amounts of data from diverse sources. We'll also dive into the importance of how your data is presented to Azure services, focusing on the Delta Parquet format.
Did you know you can explore OneLake data directly through Windows Explorer? Microsoft aims to make a single copy of your data accessible across multiple services, eliminating the need for constant data movement. Shortcuts make it easier to access your data seamlessly within the OneLake environment, enhancing efficiency and accessibility.
We hope you enjoy this foundational episode on Microsoft OneLake! If you have questions or comments, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 281: OneLake - The OneDrive for Data. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
At the Microsoft Build Conference in May 2023, Microsoft announced the new Fabric, where you could slice and dice all your data harmoniously within the environment. A few months later, Kevin, Eugene, and I discussed this evolution of the Azure Data platform in episode 267, and our thoughts on the vision for it's future, our expectations, and predictions.
Now, more than a year later, we decided it's a good time to take an in-depth look at the platform to see what goals have come to fruition, what predictions have come true, and what may have changed. In this introduction to Season 8, we'll get the conversation started.
In the next 10 episodes we'll be taking a deep dive into the reality of what Microsoft Fabric is today, navigating through the nuances, complexities, and sheer vastness of the product. We'll break it down into digestible chunks focused on specific aspects such as:
- One Lake
- Data Warehouse vs. Lakehouse vs. Eventhouse
- Data Factory
- Microsoft Synapse
- Data Governance and Security
- Data Activator
- Power BI and AI Features
- and much more
If you have questions or comments about Microsoft Fabric, please send them our way. We would love to answer your questions on a future episode. Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 280: A Focus on Microsoft Fabric. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
If you use SQL Server, you will eventually have to migrate that instance somewhere – to a new version, a new server, the cloud . . . somewhere.
Or perhaps you'll find yourself migrating from another database into SQL Server.
No matter which way you slice it, SQL Server migrations can be daunting, not to mention complex and time-consuming. While we know there are risks and many things that can go wrong, the "new" Microsoft continues to put time and effort towards making successful SQL Server migrations attainable for everyone.
In this episode of the podcast, we chat with Tejas Shah and Sudhir Raparla, 2 of the Microsoft Project Managers responsible for SQL Server migration tooling. They share practical perspectives on approaching your SQL migration with confidence and the tools and enhancements that will help.
During the conversation, Tejas and Sudhir also take us through the 5 migration steps they want you to consider as you undertake your SQL Server migration process.
Even though we’ve migrated thousands of databases, I had to go back and peek at a couple of the new features the migration tooling team has added. One intriguing addition is the Azure SQL Pricing repository, which is part of the SQL Server Migration assistant and can help with determining costs based on industry standards, deployment recommendations, target sizing, and monthly savings based on your unique scenario.
Let us know what you think! What SQL migration features have you come to trust and rely on? Did you get any good takeaways from today's podcast or have some questions? Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 279: SQL Server Migrations Demystified. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Can you run SQL Server on Azure VM? Which VM is best? Is running SQL Server on a VM in Azure the right choice? Find out in this insightful episode with Anders Pedersen!
With over 10 different SQL Server services now offered in Microsoft Azure, it can be difficult to know how you want to run your environment. Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways for an organization, and running SQL Server on a VM in Azure is the right fit.
In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we chat with Anders Pedersen about his experience moving their systems to Azure VMs. We discuss some of the tiering issues, the newest storage tier being rolled out, and how he manages upgrades.
Join us for another informative podcast where a seasoned database administrator shares their experience of managing a SQL Server environment.
Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast or have some questions? Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 278: Running SQL Server on Azure VMs. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Is testing out pgAdmin on your to-do list?
In this episode of the podcast, we chat with Ryan Booz, a PostgreSQL advocate at Redgate, about how a SQL Server professional might begin a dive into PostgreSQL, one of the most popular open source databases in the world.
Ryan came from a career background in SQL Server, but after experiencing his accidental "jump-into-the-deep-end" PostgreSQL moment, he hasn’t looked back.
Naturally, open source presents DBAs and their organizations with many desirable features, but there are certain drawbacks as well. Ryan shares how he navigated his transition into PostgreSQL and raises some points to consider if you are thinking about a switch. We discuss a few of the land mines you might encounter along the way as well as terminology differences in this space.
Be sure to check out Planet PostgreSQL for the most recent blog posts from the very folks that are contributing code to the PostgreSQL project.
Have you shifted from SQL Server to PostgreSQL? How'd it go? Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast or have some questions? Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 277: PostgreSQL for the SQL Server Crowd. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Listener beware! This episode is full of danger as we tackle an interesting use case for Dynamic SQL. Dynamic SQL generally has a bad reputation in SQL Server circles, and with good reason. Dynamic SQL can open the door to many undesirable results - SQL Injection attacks being the most frightening of these. It can also be difficult to read, making maintenance problematic; however, in this episode one brave soul - Marathon's own Laura Moss - explains how she uses Dynamic SQL to help refresh a subset of production data to be used in their development environments. You know we are always suckers for an interesting use case and Laura delivers big time. While you won’t be able to plug and play her example into your environment, we hope it gets the wheels turning if you struggle to update your test environments.
Have you found a way to use Dynamic SQL as a tool for good and not evil? Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast or have some questions? Leave us a comment and some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 276: Dynamic SQL and Testing in Isolation. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
What kinds of problems are organizations solving with Machine Learning? In this episode, we explore a situation where a public works department was looking for more accurate information to predict future water levels based on rainfall to maintain water tank storage for balancing pressure and to prevent overflow flooding. Marathon data solutions consultants Brian Knox and Andy Yao, built a custom machine learning model and made the results available through Power BI reporting. We talk through some of the data hurdles the project presented, the tools they used, and how their work provided results the client could rely on. We touch on Azure ML environment and future integrations that will come with Power BI and ML.
Have you done any work in ML or predictive modeling? Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast? Leave us some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 275: Machine Learning and Power BI. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
After discussing the Capabilities Maturity Model in our last episode, it was fate when Andy Levy reached out and suggested a topic which sounds like a case study about his experience with CMM. As the only data professional in his organization at the time of his hiring, Andy went from fixing problems to slowing increasing his role in the organization and participating in the planning meetings—being in the room where decisions are made and change happens. We think this episode will be an interesting perspective for those who might be on the fence about the model, and looking for ways to increase their own visibility in an organization.
Let us know what you think! What do you think of CMM? Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast? Leave us some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 274: A CMM Case Study. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you ever felt stuck in a rut, repeating the same tasks, while knowing there is room for improvement? The Capability Maturity Model may be a way for you to start contributing to those improvements. In this podcast episode, Kevin Kline from SolarWinds walks us through how we might go from simply dealing with issues as they come, to being a contributor in decisions about the future of our organization.
Listen in and learn about the levels of CMM, how they relate to those of us in data professions, and how you can apply the methodologies to become a leader who drives positive change, while doing what you love.
Let us know what you think! What CMM level are you in presently? Did you get any good take-aways from today's podcast? Leave us some love ❤️ on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 273: The Capability Maturity Model for Data Professionals. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Do you find yourself repeating the same actions when pulling SQL Server performance metrics?
Performance tuning a troublesome SQL Server can be a challenge. Luckily the community continues to produce wonderful folks like Erik Darling who contribute their knowledge to make your life a bit easier. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners podcast, we sit down with Erik and discuss the scripts he built to gather performance metrics. While every potential issue is not captured in these scripts, they'll help you start gathering information so you can decide on the next step to take.
Get the scripts
Have you used Erik’s scripts before? Let us know!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 272: Performance Tuning Scripts. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
This past November, Eugene and I attended the 2023 PASS Data Community Summit (aka PASS Summit) in Seattle, while Kevin headed down to Orlando for the Microsoft Live! 360 event in Orlando. Having no remote option this year was fine for us, as it was great to reconnect with our friends and colleagues in the data community, as well as get updates live and in-person from Microsoft on all the new features rolling out. The focus of both conferences was eerily similar and in this episode we discuss our experiences along with a picture of what 2024 will look like. Azure services continue to be a focus and Fabric is included in that space; however, I was surprised at the number of Postgres sessions. In fact, PostGres got a whopping 30 minutes out the 90-minute Microsoft keynote.
AI continued to be peppered in the conversation and Kevin gives us his take on where some of this is going. As a side reference, if you are interested in learning more about large language models, check out this video by Andrej Karpathy.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 271: PASS Summit 2023 Wrap-Up. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Moving up the ranks in the holy technology wars is the medallion architecture, and boy are we interested in getting your thoughts. Not since the 2008 Olympics and Michael Phelps' tenth of a second win over Milorad Cavic has there been so much controversy around bronze, silver, and gold.
This episode of the podcast has a genesis with Databricks and the methodology of getting data into a workable form for all the reporting pieces businesses love so much. We discuss our thoughts on the various layers of a medallion architecture and the implementation in Azure delta lake environments.
Have a different take? Let us know!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 270: Medallion Architecture. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this Episode, Carlos talks about managed services and shares some of the benefits of working with an MSP, as well as potential cons.
The term manage services refers to the practice of outsourcing business administration or management responsibilities to the third party. Why would you ever want to outsource these pieces?
Listen in to learn more and see if hiring an MSP would be a good decision for your company.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 269: Why Do I Need a Managed Service Provider? Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We love hearing from our listeners!!! In this episode, a long-time listener asked about the future of AI in the data platform space. We thought this was a very interesting topic as Microsoft has been including Artificial Intelligence or AI in more and more of its marketing material. In this episode we'll dive into the definition of AI, what features are currently available, how we can leverage those technologies, and where we think this might go in the future. One of the challenges we currently face is all the buzz and excitement around AI. From a data platform vantage point, we started with analytics and training models to analyze the data. Microsoft has suddenly slapped Artificial Intelligence on some of the feature sets and confuses the issue a bit.
We are excited to have Mike Chrestensen from Duke Health as our episode guest to help us sort it all out. Mike has begun leveraging AI in his work and I think he gives some interesting thoughts on how he has used it to help his team go faster. We hope you enjoy the episode. As always, we welcome your feedback and thoughts.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 268: AI and the Future of the DBA. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
All your data, all your teams—in one place. What am I? If you said Microsoft Fabric, you win! When I interned with Cisco Systems in 2000, I supported a platform called Unified Messaging. At that time, we were talking about getting your email, voice mail, and faxes all in one place. My, how the times have changed.
To a certain extent, the Microsoft Fabric is an extension, or wrapper, of some of the tools we have talked about in other episodes. The central idea is the ability to store your information in a data lake, and then having multiple tools at your disposal to use that data as required by the business. Power BI is the cherry on top - providing the visualizations and access to the source data that the business users like to get their hands on.
In this episode we talk through the architecture and then discuss when organizations might want to adopt Microsoft Fabric. Would you like to hear more about this in a future episode? Let us know and we’ll look to circle back with long time friend of the podcast Jonathan Stewart.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 267: Microsoft Fabric. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We're kicking off Season 7 with containers!
Spinning up a VM may not be such a big deal anymore; however, most of us still have to request from another group one and wait. Even waiting on an Azure VM can be somewhat painful. Wouldn't it be nice to forget about setting up another development environment just to test something that isn't going to stick around?
Our guest today is Chuck Bryan, and he talks to us about how he is using containers to support his environments and the flexibility it provides to him in his development.
While the Linux containers used to get lots of love, there haven't been too many feature updates lately as much of the focus is on azure services. What is cool to me is there are tools out there that can help us folks running windows get up and running without having to wait on our infrastructure to upgrade to Windows server 2016--or have Azure spend.
Chuck gives us some insights on how he got started with containers. We discuss what environments might benefit from them--and which ones won't. He also gives us a couple of tips on the best places to get started.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at Episode 266: Working With Containers. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Compañeros! In May, SQL Data Partners was acquired by Marathon Consulting. There were many moving parts to get this done and we are excited to finally bring this news to the podcast. In this episode we introduce the principles of Marathon Consulting, and we discuss the future of the podcast. Make sure your speakers are adjusted properly when you listen to this episode. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know via LinkedIn—we always look forward to hearing from you.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/06/28/episode-265-why-and-whats-next/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
A backup is only helpful when you can restore the backup. This should not prove to be overly shocking; however, normally we get the satisfaction of taking a backup and feel like all is well. Ideally, we should be testing our backups on some cadence—and it should be more frequent than the annual disaster recovery test. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast we talk with Chris Marshall, owner of Verified Backups, about how he has solved this problem and how it can benefit your organization. We discuss some of the requirements you’ll need to address in your own testing, and we give some parameters for who might be a good candidate for the service Chris and his team provide.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/04/12/episode-264-verified-backups. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
When we couldn’t confirm a guest speaker by recording time, Eugene, Kevin, Amanda, and I decided the show must go on, so we went into the ideas vault and pulled out a couple of listener questions we hadn’t answered. In this episode, we talk about how to create your own documentation, SSMS installs, SOS_Scheduler_Yield and Eugene gives us an update on SQL Bits and the conference crud he picked up along the way.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/29/episode-263-sql-server-this-n-that. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Learning new technology can be difficult—especially when it’s a technology in an area you are not familiar with. In this episode, Eugene walks us through some of the challenges he has faced getting started with Azure Synapse. We hope that this episode might be helpful to those trying to learn new features.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/15/episode-262-learning-azure-synapse-pt-1. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
It would appear Microsoft has run out of words to use for new features/products, so they are just going to recycle existing words for a bit of fun at our expense. In this episode we explore the Azure Data Lakehouse—which is not a data lake, nor a traditional data warehouse and Books Online (BOL) refers to it as Databricks Lakehouse. Luke Moloney walks us through how combining the flexibility of data lake storage with some ACID transaction and data governance gives organizations looking to analyze their data a new option. The hope is the cost to build, store, and analyze data will be easier and more approachable for organizations who don’t want to go with the traditional data warehouse model. This still feels like an Enterprise feature to me but let me know if your organization would be interested in this approach. As always, special thanks to Luke and the folks at Microsoft for making themselves available to us.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/01/episode-261-the-data-lakehouse. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We’re back with another SQL Server 2022 feature—Contained Availability Groups. Have you ever failed over to a secondary node and then found a job or login missing? This new Enterprise-only feature aims to solve this problem by ‘containing’ all the objects—master, msdb, AND the availability database all in one group so you can manage everything you need when you have to fail over. Brandon Leach returns after more than 200 episodes to give us the lowdown on this new feature and walk us through where you should start planning your upgrade.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/02/15/episode-260-contained-availability-groups. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We kick off the new year discussing a new feature in SQL Server 2022 called Transact-SQL snapshot backups. Good luck with the Google search on this feature--we know we had fun. 😊 These are not the snapshot backups you were frustrated with in 2005. We talk a little bit about who will be interested in this feature and what scenarios it will come in handy. The hardware vendors seem particularly excited about this future as they can now introduce snapshots without needing a third-party application like Veeam to do that for them. We predict more collaboration between the database administrator and the hardware administrator with this feature. We also get a couple of use case scenarios from the community that we share in this episode. Are you looking forward to using snapshots more effectively in your environment? Please let us know your thoughts!
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/01/18/episode-259-t-sql-snapshot-backups/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As we close out the year, we take a look back and think about all those SQL Server 2022 episodes we didn’t record this year—and then make the goal to increase this count in the new year. 😊 We discuss some of the Cardinality Estimation changes in this version and the scenarios in which this may affect other features. I ask Kevin and Eugene what technologies they will be focusing on in the year ahead and how many books Kevin is going to try and write. From all of us at SQL Data Partners, we wish you and yours a Happy New Year!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/12/28/episode-258-leave-2022-enter-2023. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you ever thought about working for yourself? It can be very enticing for some, and in this episode, we talk with John Sterrett about the pros and cons of running your own organization. We tackle some of the reasons you might get started and we share some of our experiences of working in our own organizations. Each person’s journey is going to be different and as hard as it will be, you need to ensure you don’t allow others success or failure to overly influence your decisions. As the work environment has shifted in the last two years, it may that be some of the previous ‘whys’ no longer apply. If you have thoughts around this, let us know!!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/11/30/episode-257-the-business-of-working-for-yourself. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Seven years ago, I started the SQL Data Partners Podcast. We have now arrived at Episode 256, and we dedicate this episode to you, the community. Thanks to everyone who has joined us along the way, and we hope to continue providing content you can enjoy on the go while still connecting with your SQL Server community. While we originally thought we might focus on SQL Server 2022, we really found there are just lots of great topics to be covering in the future. We hope you enjoy this special community edition of the SQL Data Partners Podcast.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/11/03/episode-256-the-community-episode/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
One of the biggest challenges with developers using object-relational mapping (ORM) tools is the bad queries or procedures they create. Sure, most tools can create CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete, Upsert) procedures, but what about the extremely advanced safe dynamic Search stored procedures? My bet is they are super inefficient and could be improved. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we talk with Kevin Martin, the creator of sp_CRUDGen, about how his procedure can help your developers create better CRUD-type stored procedures. As always, we are super excited about sharing what our great community is working on, and we think there will be value in the work Kevin has put together. Have you used sp_CRUDGen? We’d love to get your thoughts.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/10/05/episode-255-automate-complex-crud-with-sp_crudgen/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Would you be interested in a tool to help you do code review checks and provide developers guidance on best practices? In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we talk with Kevin Martin, the creator of sp_Develop, about how his procedure can help you review naming conventions, table conventions, data type conventions, SQL code conventions, data issues, and even configuration issues. Kevin was approached about writing a best practice document but ended up writing a stored procedure you and I can use to help our environment. We love sharing what community members have done and hope you enjoy this conversation with Kevin on the tool. He is looking for folks to help him build out items, so if you have a suggestion, be sure to include it in GitHub.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/09/21/episode-254-code-smell-checks-with-sp_develop/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this episode, we dive into the Power Apps offering and discuss the pros and cons of using this latest Microsoft offering. Some definitions are given and hopefully this episode can orient folks on how to position Power Apps in their organizations.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/09/07/episode-253-go-mobile-with-power-apps. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Knowing your SQL Server is patched when an issue occurs is worth the effort of keeping it patched. While I don’t suggest a zero-day install for most folks, setting up a regular cadence to check is a reasonable ask if you have to manage a system. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we discuss the need for patching and how you might go about it. Special shoutout to Episode 112 with the late Robert Davis on the same subject. We would also like to thank the fine folks at dbatools.io for some nifty PowerShell to help us install patches and Brent Ozar for keeping up sqlserverupdates.com. If you have some additional ideas on how to best meet your patching needs, let us know via social media!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/08/24/episode-252-the-cumulative-update-dilemma. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Knowing your SQL Server is patched when an issue occurs is worth the effort of keeping it patched. While I don’t suggest a zero-day install for most folks, setting up a regular cadence to check is a reasonable ask if you have to manage a system. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we discuss the need for patching and how you might go about it. Special shoutout to Episode 112 with the late Robert Davis on the same subject. We would also like to thank the fine folks at dbatools.io for some nifty PowerShell to help us install patches and Brent Ozar for keeping up sqlserverupdates.com. If you have some additional ideas on how to best meet your patching needs, let us know via social media!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/08/24/episode-252-the-cumulative-update-dilemma. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
How can you begin to integrate AI models into your environment without spending months building everything out? As we continue our march to Episode 256, we bring back our friend Sam Nasr to talk about Azure Cognitive Services. Sam walks us through a few examples of how he was able to leverage some pre-packaged voice recognition services to assist customers get to the proper area for service. We discuss scenarios where Azure Cognitive Services really shines and where you may have to develop more custom solutions or look for extensions. If you are using Azure Cognitive Services, let us know your experience!
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/08/10/episode-251-azure-cognitive-services. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
This episode we are doing a bit of a look back and are going to air some previously buried content. Some of the bloopers are pre-video and some of them have some physical comedy, which you’ll have to go to YouTube to see. While a few were cut out of the published episodes, they are mostly things you’ve never heard.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/07/27/episode-250-what-happens-before-companeros/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Data marts in Power BI have arrived and the words “data mart” mean something to data professionals. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we introduce the latest offering in Power BI and discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly for teams looking to arrive at self-service business intelligence.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/07/12/episode-249-data-marts-in-power-bi/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
How do you keep records of your SQL Server environments? Patching levels, security accounts, configuration options, maintenance jobs and the like are some of the pieces we have to keep organized. Are you using something besides Excel to keep up with this? Sure, we can use the Content Management Server (CMS) to query across several instances, but we still need to organize this information somewhere. Our guests for this episode, Sean and Jen McCown, discuss inventory challenges with us and why this information is important. We might also get into some new features of their software, MinionWare. If you have a suggestion we didn’t discuss, please let us know!
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/06/29/episode-248-inventory-documentation. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
IT workers will generally claim they like learning new technology—it is almost a required attribute. Why then is bringing in new technology so hard? In this episode, we explore how new technologies make their way into organizations and how we might either embrace them or how this becomes a major challenge. There are so many new technologies now, it is very difficult to keep up with. I would love to hear from you on this. Please share with us your success stories on bringing in new technology and how it benefited you or your organization.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/06/15/episode-247-pushing-the-boundaries-or-pushing-your-luck. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
While we continue to review the new features of the CTP preview of SQL Server 2022, we turn our attention to the recent Microsoft Build conference and talk about some of the announcements made. We try to separate the interesting technology from the marketing fluff and what pieces might trickle into the data platform space. Defining your requirements has never been more important as the number of offerings continue to increase. We were super excited to hear about Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform; however, a little digging into the technology makes us realize we aren’t quite ready to pay for that service tier.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/06/08/episode-246-microsoft-build-2022-announcements. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) version 18 was introduced to support SQL Server 2019 and in this episode of the podcast, we discuss some of the new updates available in SSMS and Azure Data Studio. We talk about scenarios where we use these tools and give some feedback on the new Azure services they support.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/04/20/episode-245-tooling-updates. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Who made that change? It is one of those questions that can send chills down the spine of those responsible for databases. In this episode, Josephine Bush talks with us about how we can use a combination of the native tools—auditing and extended events along with some custom reporting to be prepared for questions about change when more environments are subject to regulation.
What is great about the community is their willingness to share and Josephine comes through with a set of her own scripts. What I think is most helpful is the filtering included so you only need to capture the most pertinent changes. This helps you feel confident you capture the most important pieces without all the extra logging you have to muck through when you actually have a question to answer.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/03/30/episode-244-extended-events-vs-sql-server-audit. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Conferences are on the uptick as COVID restrictions lift and we are excited for the upcoming year. After Eugene's return from SQLBits my thoughts revolved around what I wanted to learn this year at conferences and how you and I can go about picking the content we want to know more this year. Join us for a quick discussion on deciding what to learn as conference season picks up.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/03/16/episode-243-choosing-what-content-to-focus-on. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SQL Server 2012 is end of life later this year. I feel too young for this to be happening—it seems like only last year SQL Server 2005 came out. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about upgrading your SQL Server. We share some concepts, gotchas, war stories, situations we want to avoid, how to access license keys in Azure, and a few other migration nuggets we’ve learned along the way.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/02/02/episode-242-upgrading-your-sql-server. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Do you find you need to keep SQL Server tables in sync across multiple systems? After several projects involving syncing data, we return to the topic of Azure SQL Data Sync with some real world examples of why we choose this option and how it worked for us. While there are some limitations, the feature is very stable, and we have had minimal, minor issues with it. Ideal for environments where latency is flexible, Azure SQL Data Sync could be a very helpful feature to get your data moved.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/01/20/episode-241-replicating-data-with-azure-sql-data-sync. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Azure Synapse Link is a feature coming to SQL Server in the next release. While there are few details on what the new feature will look like, we discuss how this same service is implemented in other Azure services.
The show notes and video for this episode can found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/01/05/episode-240-azure-synapse-link. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SQL Server 2022 has been announced and we are excited to start unpacking the new features. For this episode, we start with a very interesting feature--Bi-directional HA/DR to Azure SQL. We have the ability to failover to the cloud now—the trick is, getting back is not as simple. Now, the on-premises version will be compatible with Azure SQL Managed Instance, and this will give move options for DR—and make setting it up even easier.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/12/15/episode-239-bi-directional-ha-dr-to-azure-sql. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Part 2
Power BI has been described as a “self-service” BI platform. While that may bring to mind an image of easy-peasy, plug-and-play, there are a few things most organizations will want to address before turning users loose with Power BI. In this conversation, Brandon Michals helps us take a look at three areas of consideration: your company, your people, and your data. Spending the time to think through and take the appropriate action in each of these areas will go a long way towards helping your organization achieve a successful Power BI implementation.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/12/01/episodes-237-and-238-getting-started-with-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Part 1
Power BI has been described as a “self-service” BI platform. While that may bring to mind an image of easy-peasy, plug-and-play, there are a few things most organizations will want to address before turning users loose with Power BI. In this conversation, Brandon Michals helps us take a look at three areas of consideration: your company, your people, and your data. Spending the time to think through and take the appropriate action in each of these areas will go a long way towards helping your organization achieve a successful Power BI implementation.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/12/01/episodes-237-and-238-getting-started-with-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Building your own scripts to monitor SQL Server seems like a very reasonable thing to do. We’re smart folks and SQL Server is what we do for a living—we should be able to figure this out. Upon further inspection, we found it was easier for us to focus on what we do—database administration, and let the developers focus on what they do—build software. This episode explores our choice of SolarWinds SQL Sentry as the monitoring standard for SQL Data Partners.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/11/17/episode-236-database-monitoring-with-sql-sentry. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Live Podcast! We decided it was time to try and get together in person and reconnect. As we did, we pulled out the microphone and started recording. As a result, we break the single topic mode this week and opened it up for a Q&A session. We touch on database monitoring, memory grants, what we miss about being in an office, and even SharePoint (Gasp!).
The show notes for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/11/03/episode-235-sql-trail-2021-in-person-qa. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As a data pro, you are negotiating and problem-solving all the time, often without knowing it. Your success as a professional as your company evolves its Data Platform depends on how well you can communicate and influence. It’s a scary thought, but your ability to negotiate with the business directly often determines if your projects get funded. Those skills are arguably as important as your T-SQL. In this episode, we chat with Blythe Morrow about strategies you can incorporate to better communicate with those around you.
The show notes for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/10/06/episode-234-communication-tips-for-the-it-pro/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Never heard of ScriptDOM? Neither had we…okay, except Kevin, who obviously knows all. Apparently, the documentation is scarce. Mala Mahadevan uses it, loves it, and graciously offered to come back to the podcast to educate us and our listeners on a product that can help us parse, process and format our SQL queries. The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/09/15/episode-233-scriptdom. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Public speaking is not fun for most; however, it can be very rewarding. Chris Seferlis chats with us about a few tips he has on being a speaker. Most of the tactical advice we defer to a toastmasters or public speaking group, so we give some thoughts on preparation, soliciting feedback, audience engagement, and handling criticism. I should point out that public speaking is WAY different from recording videos. We hope you find the information useful. Did we miss anything? Let us know!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/09/01/episode-232-giving-technical-presentations. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Everyone has bad days; however, how those bad days develop are unique to each of us. In a special episode, we chat with Tracy Boggiano about her experiences with Mental Health, how she has dealt with it, how each of us can work on our own mental health, and phrases we should avoid saying to those with mental health issues. Our own Eugene Meidinger shares a story on negative thinking and how damaging it can be. We hope this conversation will help foster ideas on how you can feel more comfortable talking about Mental Health and making it easier for those who struggle.
One of the core principles at SQL Data Partners is to "Act in a way that expresses care, hope, love, and joy". As we talked during the episode, I was struck by how this principle is correlated to mental health. I had not made the connection before. While we may not be able to solve other problems, we can show support by expressing care, hope, love, and joy. If we can foster these environments, it will make it easier to get through our own bad day when they happen.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/08/11/episode-231-mental-health-and-wellness-in-it. Take care of yourself on the SQL Trail!
No one wants to lose data when disaster strikes; however, we need to plan for some data loss and putting all the pieces in place can be tricky. There are two metrics commonly used to measure data loss and availability when it comes to planning for disasters—Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective. In this episode, we touch on how you might come up with these metrics, how to consider the implementation cost, and how you might go about walking through a disaster situation to test your plan.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/08/04/episode-230-rto-rpo. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The scary part of upgrading SQL Server is finding out you have a problem AFTER the fact. In this episode, Mariano Kovo joins us to discuss the Data Migration Assistant tool from Microsoft. While the name can be a bit misleading, (What? Microsoft have confusing names—that's a first), the major benefit to the tool is the assessment feature to alert you of potential issues when you upgrade. Issues are broken into three major categories:
- Breaking Changes
- Behavior Changes
- Deprecated Changes
While each change should be reviewed, many times we allow deprecated features to remain unresolved as they are still supported in SQL Server; however, we certainly want to put those on the backlog because one day Microsoft will finally pull the plug and we want to be ahead of the curve.
You can find the show notes and video for today's episode at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/07/21/episode-229-data-migration-assistant. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As data practitioners, we want to get ahead of any problems that might come up and share those insights with others on our team. In this episode, Edward Pollack gives us a few scenarios we might consider as we attempt to prevent application issues. These techniques also go into the security space and could help prevent data loss. As we collect this information and make it available to others, we can also demonstrate the ROI we provide to the organization.
You can find the show notes and video for this episode at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/07/14/episode-228-predicting-application-problems-with-database-metrics. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Organizations look to constantly improve and offer better services and the application tooling has been built to accommodate the process. Database tooling has been a bit slower to develop; however, in this episode Eitan Blumin, a co-host at sqlserverradio.com, brings us up to speed on the latest features of SQL Server Data Tools with some thoughts on how to get started with continual deployment or ‘devops’. We know this can feel like a steep learning curve for folks without a programming background and we share a few resources for you to get started.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/06/23/episode-227-ssdt-methodologies-for-db-devops/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Let’s say you have completed a lift and shift VM hosting to the cloud. Great—you now use Iaas services. While you don’t have to worry about the hardware, managing the software can be problematic. The SQL Server IaaS Agent Extension can offer some PaaS-like services and make it easier to manage the database environment. In this episode we chat with Ameena Lalani from Microsoft about this feature, why you might want to enable it, the prerequisites, and the downsides. She also shares her daily guilty pleasure and Kevin lets it be known he doesn’t put toppings on his ice cream anymore.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/06/09/episode-226-sql-server-iaas-agent-extension/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you ever created a report in a visualization tool, spent all this time and energy creating something that looked really cool, went through more edits than you could remember only to deliver the report and have the recipient go “What am I looking at?” I don’t think I am the only one and, in this episode, we explore some of the rookie mistakes IT pros make when creating visualizations.
The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/05/26/episode-225-dashboard-design-principles. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Carlos, Kevin, and Eugene reconnect after some time away with a new streaming time. Long form conversation on a single topic is also the place we want to get back to in our podcast.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/04/28/episode-224-the-standup-meeting/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
With both Kevin and Eugene busy this week, Carlos went solo to share a few changes to the podcast, including the Twitch livestream moving to Tuesday, how you can support the podcast, and podcast episodes going back to being published every other Wednesday. If you have a subject that you’d like to chat about on the podcast with us, we’d love to schedule a time with you…go to sqldatapartners.com/podcast to sign up. We invite you to submit to our Call for Speakers for SQL Trail June 2021, starting April 15th, and whether you speak or not, to attend SQL Trail on June 15th. Carlos also discusses how you can join the SQL Data Partners team as an independent contractor.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/04/14/episode-223-podcast-update. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Azure Arc-enabled data services provide powerful capabilities to deploy and manage local, on-premises, and hybrid cloud data resources using the same centralized management and tooling you get from the Azure cloud. Since Eugene suggested our previous attempt at Azure Arc was insufficient, we invited Ben Weissman and Anthony Nocentino, authors of the book Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services Revealed, to the podcast to discuss how this technology came about and why the future looks very exciting.
The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/03/24/episode-222-azure-arc-enabled-data-services. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Virtual conferences are just not the same as the conferences we are used to, but we’re still determined to provide a good learning and networking environment for our friends. We very much miss having conferences in person and look forward to that happening again. In the meantime, we have discovered Airmeet and we had a great event: our first of the year. We are doing another data platform conference in June similar to this one and a bigger event in October. Carlos and Kevin sit down and dissect the good, the bad and the indifferent that was SQL Trail March 2021.
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/03/22/episode-221-sql-trail-march-2021-retrospective. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As we prepare for SQL Trail on March 18th, we peek back at Microsoft Ignite and review the announcements made there—filtering out the pieces our compañeros will enjoy hearing about. Did we miss something you think we should talk about? Let us know!
The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/03/10/episode-220-microsoft-ignite-recap. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
How do you document your SQL Server environments? I can remember walking through Brent Ozar’s takeover script back in the day and how cumbersome it was to put all that information together. We have a few more options available to us now. In this episode, we discuss a listener question along with some options for doing server inventories. SQL Trail is coming on March 18th. Will we see you there?
The show notes (and video) for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/02/24/episode-219-sql-server-inventory. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, Eugene and I go back to our DBA beginnings and talk about database file growth, how to manage files and how to tell when a file has grown.
The show notes for today's episode (including the video with the demonstration) can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/02/17/episode-218-file-growths. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The story begins with a process that has been running forever and suddenly decides to cause grief by filling up tempdb. We talk about patching, and we talk about mental health. We talk a little about various topics.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/02/10/episode-217-a-little-something-about-a-few-things. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
When working on a customer on an import process, she made the comment—if we were doing true EDI, we’d [Do X]. The comment got me thinking—Aren’t we working on an EDI process? As someone who frequently has multiple roles on projects, I perhaps had lumped all the various 3 letter acronyms into the same spaghetti salad. In this episode of the podcast, Eugene and I chat about the differences—and how thy might impact your team. Data projects can get complex with lots of moving pieces and understanding the different pieces can be helpful as you work to solve your specific pieces of the puzzle.
The show notes for this episode and the video to watch Eugene's Query Folding demo in action can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/02/03/episode-216-edi-vs-etl. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We have been moving data for years with technologies like DTS and SSIS; however, these were very much designed for on-premises moves in mind. As more cloud services were being offered Microsoft needed a service to help customers using those services move data around. Azure Data Factory was born with the initial premise of moving data between cloud services; however, it has added the ability to connect with on-premises systems and continues to add a variety of connectors it can now natively support.
In this episode, we chat with our friend Andy Leonard about Azure Data Factory, his experience working with the product team, and how customers can leverage the cloud to get business done faster.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/01/27/episode-215-azure-data-factory/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We open this year with a few updates on the podcast, a change to SQL Trail, and we invite you to give us some feedback on writing a book for 2021.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/01/13/episode-213-new-goals-for-2021/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
20 years ago, the objection to implementing security on the basis of performance had validity—especially for smaller organizations. Security was a pain in the neck; however, how many of us are still hanging on to some of those old biases. Even worse, some of us IT pros seem to put up objections to doing the most basic security procedures—sending usernames and passwords in unencrypted emails for example. In this episode we hear from Karen Lopez, a long time speaker on data architecture and security about 10 things she thinks those of us with data stewardship responsibilities should consider.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/12/31/episode-212-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-data-security/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Microsoft released a lengthy white paper on the SolarWinds hack affecting thousands of computers. This is scary stuff, and the details continue to come out slowly and you wonder how it all will play out. Many IT pros rely on SolarWinds for monitoring and in this episode, we discuss the exploit, how mere mortals like us might feel a bit overwhelmed at the prospect, and what our due diligence is in a scenario like this.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/12/23/episode-211-solorigate/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
It was sad news to hear PASS plans to dissolve in January of 2021. So much good has come of the community and it is sad to see it go. In this episode, we explore the why behind the collapse and what we think may emerge in the aftermath.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/12/18/episode-210-the-elephant-in-the-room/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Finding your first full time job is incredibly difficult—and that was before we were in a worldwide pandemic. In this episode, we discuss some strategies and share some experiences about how we got our first jobs and hopefully give you some inspiration as you try to find your first experience.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/12/14/episode-209-career-ready-advice-to-new-graduates/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
There is a growing list of formats to store data and Graph is one of the newer trends. It is becoming so popular SQL Server has created ways to implement graph structures. Mala Mahadevan joins us in this episode, and we revisit some of the origins of Graph, what it is good at, and why you may not want to rush to move all your data to Graph storage.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/10/28/episode-208-sql-server-and-graph-data/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SQL Trail 2020 was a success! There was a time I was unconvinced this would be the case. This is not to say we didn't have issues; however, talking with others helped us avoid some common pitfalls and make our event unique. Although we were virtual, I sent all the attendees a conference t-shirt, some swag, and cookies! I wanted everyone to feel some excitement and a connection that I was not sure would be possible in a virtual setting.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/10/15/episode-207-sql-trail-2020-retrospective/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
There are many programming languages available to the modern developer and there are even more options for connecting to the database. In this episode, we talk with Taurius Litvinavicius about his Manning course on connecting .NET Core to SQL Server.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/09/16/episode-206-net-core-interactions-with-sql-server. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Power BI is founded on the idea of self-service BI and Excel is the most common data source in the world. While Power BI can import that information with ease, the data may not be in the best format. In this episode, we discuss areas report creators should consider when building Power BI reports so their reports can perform to their satisfaction and maintenance of the reports will be easier over the long run.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/09/03/episode-205-data-modeling-for-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
A variety of devices now have the ability to report metrics about status, performance, or other sensor information. Collecting this information and making it useful in business operations can be difficult and the Internet of Things (IoT) provides options for consuming, processing, and reporting. Microsoft has introduced a number of different offerings, and in this episode, we touch on a couple of them and discuss scenarios where one may serve you better than another.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/08/19/episode-204-iot-in-azure. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As we stretch the technology stack in this episode, I rely on my trusty co-hosts to get us through. Kevin and Jean-Georges Perrin do a great job giving us their thoughts on Spark. I hope you will enjoy the episode.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/08/06/episode-203-spark-in-action. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As COVID-19 prevents us from gathering in the same place, how do organizers continue to put on compelling events? This strikes home as SQL Data Partners consider whether to have our SQL Trail event this fall. Matt Gordon put on an event in April and I was interested to get his take on how things went and how he accomplished his goals for the event. I have also participated in several online events and in the episode we discuss the pros and cons of virtual events and we give our take on how to make them better.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/07/22/episode-202-virtual-conferences. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
After we recorded Episode 189, we knew we lacked some of the business reasons behind the Common Data Model. Luckily, we reached out Tricia Wilcox-Almas and she has helped us fill in some of the gaps and also present how the Common Data Model is implemented in the new versions of Azure Data Lake.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/07/08/episode-201-common-data-model. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
To celebrate our 200th episode, we reached out to Bob Ward to come and celebrate this milestone with us. I have to plead the 5th on why it took us 200 episodes to finally invite him; however, we finally wised up and Bob walks us through some of the changes SQL Server has experienced over the years and what is in store (Spoiler—no big scoops) for the relational engine. We also have a several copies of Bob’s SQL Server 2019 Revealed book to give away and he was gracious enough to sign them. We appreciate Bob joining us and look forward to another 200 episodes.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2020/06/24/episode-200-anything-but-the-cowboys. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We can incur technical debt in several ways—aging technology, choosing delivery speed over scale architecture, or implementing new technology the entire team cannot yet support. I don’t know that I’ve ever worked at a place that hasn’t talked about technical debt. It wasn’t until I stumbled on a talk by Adam Lenda that make me think about the ways I might contribute to technical debt. He also gave some ideas of how I can help pay it off.
In this episode, we talk with Adam about what technical debt is, why we might be okay incurring some, and situations we might put ourselves into when trying to do ‘the right thing’. Adam also suggests some ways to pay off some of this burden and like most debt, there is no easy fix and he suggests running a pretty tight ship; however, I found his ideas insightful and I think you will, too.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/05/06/episode-199-technical-debt. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In a previous episode (175) we discussed migrating to the cloud, and we had a few comments from our compañeros which mentioned we should include more details around cloud infrastructure—the pieces or processes you want or DON’T want to administer. In this episode, we dive into cloud infrastructure and discuss some scenarios on when you might choose one over the other. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/04/22/episode-198-cloud-infrastructure. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In 1990, the group Snap! release a song called "The Power". It would take Microsoft more than 20 years, but they eventually came up with a series of 'power' tools they built into Excel. Those tools later grew into Power BI--which is kinda like Voltron if you are old enough to remember. In this episode we discuss one of the first data manipulation tools in the set: Power Query. Before you start manipulating all those fun visualizations, you might need to get your data in shape. If you have a data warehouse, you are probably in good shape; however, for the rest of us, there is Power Query. This episode takes us through an overview and discusses in what cases you might have to dive into the code, or M language, when the GUI doesn't cut it.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/04/15/episode-197-power-query-in-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
This is a topic I have been interested in covering for some time and as our world faces a crisis dictating that we stay home, it seems like a good time to talk about teleworking. Everyone will have a different situation of course, but we thought we share some of our experiences. I continue to suggest a need to stay connected to your team and while we have lots of technology available to help us, there are a couple of things you can do to help avoid getting knocked out of the loop.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/04/01/episode-196-teleworking. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The number of new programming languages never ceases to amaze me. Technology advances continue to require new ways of allowing users to customize the way they use tools and Power BI is no different. In this episode, Ginger Grant joins us as we continue the conversation about DAX and some considerations you need to make should you want to pick up another language for the toolbelt.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/03/26/episode-195-understanding-dax. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
After Episode 180 on PolyBase came out, we received a few questions on use cases for PolyBase. Compañeros, when you ask, we reply! This episode we carve out 3 use cases for PolyBase and ways in which you might change workflows based on this SQL Server 2019 feature. If you want to dive much deeper into PolyBase, you can always check out Kevin's book on Apress!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/03/18/episode-194-polybase-use-cases. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Our regular host is down for the count with the flu; however, the podcast must go on! In this episode, we answer a listener-submitted question about Power BI Premium. Kevin and Eugene take us through Sachin Gangwar’s questions. We hope you will submit your question for a future episode!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/03/11/episode-193-power-bi-premium. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
What is the future of the DBA and what technologies should I be focused on? In this episode, we attempt to look into the crystal ball and give our take on the future of work for the data platform professional. We focus our conversation around two listener-provided questions about the best way to stay educated in an ever-changing landscape. The DBA is dead. Long live the DBA. Join the discussion.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/03/04/episode-192-the-dba-is-dead-long-live-the-dba. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could filter the rows a user sees in Power BI? What’s that? You’ve already implemented Row-Level Security at the database level? Well, that actually won’t help you in Power BI. Yikes. In this episode we discuss ways to filter by records in Power BI and why it might be so confusing to implement what at first glance seems like a straightforward request.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/02/12/episode-191-power-bi-row-level-security. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Getting released just before the end of the year, SQL Server 2019 is now available in general release. While at first glance, it appeared this release was all about Big Data Clusters, and rightfully so--it brings 'cloud first' options to on-premises scenarios; however, it is not the only big feature. We spoke about some of the Polybase changes in Episode 180 and in this episode, Javier Villegas guides us as we dive into some of the performance enhancements--and run out of time. This just means we need a few more episodes to dig into more features. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/02/05/episode-190-sql-server-2019. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Moving data is fairly straightforward; however, mapping data from one source to another can be extremely challenging. In an attempt to help self-service BI users, Microsoft has introduced a Common Data Model, and in this episode, we discuss the new model. This may not be as approachable for organizations which already have a data warehouse; however, for those who are in the Microsoft suite of tools and looking to report on that data in Power BI, the Common Data Model may be the jump start to get the model you need to get going.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/01/22/episode-189-power-bi-common-data-model. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
A couple of years ago, Netflix offered a reward for anyone who could improve the algorithm for choosing a movie. The team that came in second took what they learned from it and created a company -- Databricks. In this episode, we focus on Databricks; why it is popular, what it can be used for, and considerations for its use.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/01/15/episode-188-databricks. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Make it go faster! Visualizations are great, but when users start complaining about the load times on reports, it can be a tough exercise to figure out the issues. In this episode, we discuss ways you can measure the speed of your Power BI reports. We also get into some of the fundamentals of data storage for Power BI.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/01/08/episode-187-power-bi-performance-tuning. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
2020 dawns a first for our podcast. This episode is dedicated entirely to a listener question. We've had questions before; however, this episode the team tackles two questions from longtime listener Trent Adams. The context of his questions surround the concepts of IT having the ability to provide new functionality to the business and the business appearing to be uninterested in moving forward. While we don't know the entire situation, we discuss the best way to identify pain points and ways to introduce new technology without imposing new rules/processes on the business.
We would very much like to have more listener inspired episodes this year. If you have something you want to share with us, head over to sqldatapartners.com/podcast and submit your question and we'll try to help you on the SQL Trail! The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2020/01/01/episode-186-analytics-security-find-pain-points-make-a-plan. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Why write a book, when you already have a site full of documentation? In this episode we chat with Rob Sewell about his project to write a book, DBATools in a Month of Lunches. He gives us some insights on what the book is about, how it is different than documentation, and how the process of making the book available in pieces has helped the creative process.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/12/19/episode-185-dbatools-in-a-month-of-lunches. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
You've seen the visualizations and want to dive in--perhaps you were assigned the task. However you started with Power BI, chances are you might get stuck at some point. In this episode, we chat about strategies you can employee to help ensure success. Have a take on this? Hit us up on social media. We'd love to hear from you.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/12/11/episode-184-where-do-people-get-stuck-with-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail.
SQL Server 2019 is out and one of the most interesting additions is SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters. In this episode, Kevin Feasel covers the marriage of SQL Server and Apache Spark. We discuss what Big Data Clusters are (and how it's not a SQL Server feature or an edition of SQL Server, but a thing in itself), cover some of the architecture behind the solution, and explain how we can use them.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/12/04/episode-183-sql-server-big-data-clusters. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The very first podcast episode I recorded was about Extended Events. We've had several new versions of SQL Server since that time, so I thought it was time to bring up the subject again. We are joined by MVP Jason Brimhall and he shares his insights on Extended Events, what has changed, and how to get started.
In the second quarter of 2019, it was announced that Power BI would support paginated reports--at first this was assumed to be connected to an announcement that Power BI would support the RDL files from Reporting Services. The guidance however, was to continue building paginated reports in Power BI. In the fourth quarter of 2019, more information emerged about paginated reports and in this episode we drill into the offering of paginated reports in Power BI and...shhh...we won't spoil it, but an old friend just might play a role in this 'new' offering. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/11/13/episode-181-paginated-reports-in-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
This week we heard the news of the release for SQL Server 2019 and a major focus of this release is data virtualization. In this episode, we discuss PolyBase--a topic we covered in Episode 95; however it has really come of age with SQL Server 2019. Our very own Kevin Feasel talks about some of the improvements of the feature and we discuss some of the use cases of when it will be useful and some of the pitfalls you might run into as you implement it. We discuss how PolyBase can help you reduce storage and other costs by avoiding the need for ETL processes that duplicate data in order to make it accessible from one source. Kevin is putting the final touches on his book PolyBase Revealed, and if you are looking for a deep dive into the subject, we invite you to check out his book. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/11/06/episode-180-polybase-in-sql-server-2019. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SQL Trail continues to be an experiment in the making and year three proved no different. Eugene joined us this year and we discuss some of the changes, how the vision has changed for the conference and what the future will hold for our event. While there is plenty to be excited about with our event, we couldn't help ourselves and get into a discussion about Power BI and purchasing options. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/10/24/episode-179-sql-trail-recap-buying-power-bi. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
After 170 episodes, we bring back Louis Davidson to talk about database design and get his thoughts on how we can get better at planning for our data.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/10/16/episode-178-database-design. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The Lock Pages in Memory policy came up in our internal discussions. I wanted to chat about it a bit more and I couldn't think of a better person than Rick Lowe. After our recent SQL Trail, we sit down to discuss this policy option. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/10/09/episode-177-lock-pages-in-memory. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Creating reports in Power BI is awesome, but once you are ready to publish the reports--where are you going to store all the data? In this episode, we discuss storage options for Power BI and discuss how the version of Power BI can affect storage. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/09/25/episode-176-power-bi-storage-options/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Are you in the cloud? Lots of folks are talking about moving to the cloud; however, as we find in today's episode this can be tricky to quantify what people mean by being "in the cloud". We are happy to welcome Rick Lowe to the show and he gives his take on working with AWS. We explore what it means to move to the cloud, our experience helping companies get there, why companies would want to consider cloud options, and how you can keep up with all the craziness of new technologies in the cloud. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/09/19/episode-175-migrating-to-the-cloud. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
What do you do when you want to use the Visualizations of Power BI but management doesn't want to send company data to the cloud? Well, you can implement Power BI Report Server! In this episode we discuss the differences in architecture with the on-premises version of Power BI along with the limitations and options this version brings. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/06/26/episode-174-power-bi-report-server. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As the data platform continues to evolve, so do certifications. In this episode we chat with Rick Heiges about the new role-based certifications and how they fit into Microsoft's cloud platform. We revisit how certifications still play a role in career development and how certifications have changed. Also, Kevin gives us his experience with taking an exam at home.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/06/12/episode-173-new-data-certifications. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
From a SQL Server perspective we have many ways to identify problem areas. In this episode, we discuss ways to diagnose performance issues in Power BI. They are certainly making many strides; however, the tools won't feel as mature as they do in SQL Server. We review usage metrics, audit logs, the new Data Gateway monitoring tool and monitoring options in Power BI Premium. The Performance Analyzer had just been released and while we don't go into great detail, we'll be sure to include it in the show notes.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/06/05/episode-172-power-bi-monitoring/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
You’ve got first name, last name, full name, birth date, address, email, phone, tax ID or Social Security Number, driver’s license number, medical evaluation notes, MAC address, and IP address columns in a table. So, what would you encrypt in this table? In this episode, our guest, Tom Norman discusses various encryption options and how he goes about choosing what to encrypt. As there are more and more security breaches, the ability to encrypt data is as important as ever.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/05/22/episode-171-sql-server-encryption. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Two years ago blogger Jay Killeen observed, "And with modern languages and modern applications such as PowerBI and Power Query you should be safe to assume there would be modern tooling. You would be wrong." In this episode, Eugene and I explore the challenges with Devops in Power BI and some ways we and others have implemented to help us deal with versions and team development of reports. Companeros, you can also win a SQL Data Partners T-shirt if you post on social media using the hashtag #sqltrail.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/05/15/episode-170-devops-with-power-bi/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
These are dark times. Drastic measures must be taken. In this episode, we talk about--coding. Queue scary music Last year I bumped into Sean McCown and found out he had coded himself a GUI for his MinionWare product. This left me both impressed and stumped. We talk with Sean, Eugene, and Kevin about why they decided to learn a coding language and I give some of my hesitations for not picking up a coding book. The show notes can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/05/08/episode-169-should-you-learn-to-code. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
One of the great abilities we have with Power BI is connecting to multiple data sources. Authors can actually publish data sources for others to use in their reports. Developers then get to mix and match our reports with all that data; however, there will be times we don't want everyone to see all the data sources. In today's episode, we discuss Power BI privacy levels, what they are and what they can--and can't do for you.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/05/01/episode-168-data-privacy-settings. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Azure SQL Data Sync has been generally available for almost a year now. Have you heard of it? Are you using it? Microsoft's page tell us that "Data Sync is useful in cases where data needs to be kept up-to-date across several Azure SQL databases or SQL Server databases." When you want to learn about a new product or feature, who better to ask than the Senior Project Manager in charge of it? Today we chat about Azure SQL Data Sync with Xiaochen Wu from Microsoft. He explains how it works, why you might want to use it, it's current limitations and what's in the pipeline in the way of improvements. It's an exciting time to be in technology and a great conversation!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/04/24/episode-167-azure-sql-data-sync. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The number one reason organizations choose Power BI is the ability to visualize data; however, even with all the immediate choices, many report developers desire to create custom visualizations. In this episode, we chat about custom visualizations for Power BI: how to get them, how to pick them, and when (if ever) you would consider building your own. Have a favorite custom visualization you have used? Let us know!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/04/17/episode-166-custom-visuals. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Why should I care about this episode? I know many of you are going to ask that question. Artificial Intelligence is getting lots of buzz and in this episode we invite Hope Foley from Microsoft to discuss why and how AI is relevant to those in the data platform community. We get a little help from Kevin Feasel as we try to connect the dots between all the hype and how this can and will affect you in the future. Did we do a good job? Let us know and contribute to the conversation.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/03/27/episode-165-artificial-intelligence. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
DAX is the acronym for Data Analysis Expressions, and it is the formula language used throughout Power BI. In this episode we talk about DAX concepts and how they are simple and straightforward, but can be confusing for those coming from a relational database background. DAX uses some unique programming concepts and patterns which can make it difficult to fully use and understand. We talk about some experiences getting started with this language and ideas on how you can get started.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/03/20/episode-164-the-dax-episode. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Are you experiencing challenges managing Very Large Databases (VLDBs), or anticipate challenges with future growth? In this episode, we are joined by Aaron Hayes to discuss the practical advice on managing very large databases in SQL Server, focusing on common problem areas we have found, along with our own experiences. Topics include storage layout decisions, unique tuning challenges, HA/DR implications, and database restores, along with the challenges of getting backups, re-indexing and DBCC checks into your maintenance windows. No comparisons here -- we are sure you will enjoy the discussion regardless of your database size.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/03/12/episode-163-very-large-databases. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this corner, coming in with all its Excel glory we have Power Query! And in this corner we have a new programming language, DAX! Have you ever felt like there is a tug of war going on between these two technologies? In this episode, the team discusses the two technologies, what they do, when -- and perhaps more importantly, WHY might you use them.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/02/27/episode-162-power-query-vs-dax. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
How do you migrate 8,000 databases on a single instance in an environment that doesn't tolerate downtime? Today's episode focuses on migration strategy and how our guest Andy Levy faced the challenge of moving all those databases in the time constraints given him by the business. We also talk about some of the strategies Andy employs to administer and monitor all those databases.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/02/20/episode-161-migrating-upgrading-8000-databases. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
The traditional model for Power BI is to pay per user, but what if you want to use the reports in your web app and don't know who all the users would be? In this episode the team explores Power BI Embedded -- how it differs from the traditional service, what you need to set it up, and some reasons why you might explore this option over the others.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/02/13/episode-160-power-bi-embedded. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
So what happens when you want to use data from two different sources, manipulate it (transform it) and then present the data in Power BI -- and you don't know how to use SSIS? Well, it turns out you can use Power BI dataflows. In this episode we explore the topic of dataflows with our guest, Matthew Roche, and talk about the scenarios and types of folks dataflows was intended for.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/02/06/episode-159-power-bi-dataflows. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
For only 10 bucks a month you can start visualizing your data and finally get the dashboard your executives have been waiting for!! What's that? You need to refresh the data--perhaps even multiple times a day? Oh, well it's still $10 a month, but you are also going to install a gateway. What's that you say? Well, in this episode we begin our discussion on Power BI with one of the first components you will need outside of the Power BI Desktop for your users to start interacting with updated data. We discuss what it is, some of the requirements, and our experiences setting one up.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/01/23/episode-158-gateways. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
I can still remember working in high school when you had to 'dial in' to the internet and Microsoft bought the rights to the Rolling Stones song 'Start Me Up' for the release of their highly anticipated software Windows 95. It was a complete game changer for me and shaped my professional life with the releases of the Windows Server Operating System. While you could never just wing it, the GUI provided a rich interface and the ability to explore features without having to know all the syntax to execute the functionality. You can image the surprise I felt when Microsoft came out with Windows Core--an operating system with no GUI. While you may not have adopted Windows Core yet, our guest, Frank Henninger, suggests you should reconsider. We chat with him about the benefits, some of the challenges, and how we can better take advantage of using Windows Core.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/01/10/episode-157-windows-server-core. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
How well do you connect with others? We generally think pretty good of ourselves and at first glance you may give yourself a pretty high score. While there is no test you can take to compare your results to mine, the way you connect with others can have a profound influence in the workplace and we are each judged by the people we come in contact with. Our guest in this episode, Linda Groszyk, talks with us about some of the ways social intelligence can impact us, how we can get better at it and who we can reach out to if we need help.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2019/01/02/episode-156-social-intelligence. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Do you want to be a data scientist? Do you even know what data science is? In this episode, we tackle the idea of being a data scientist and discuss the criteria and what it may take to get the job description of data scientist. So not everyone feels out in the cold, our guest Brad Llewellyn, talks about how this field has developed out of data analysis and how we may have much more in common than differences between us.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/12/12/episode-155-data-science/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Who hasn't had a deployment go a bit sideways? For all the talk of DevOps these days, the ability to push out code can still be challenging. When I heard David Moore, our guest today, talk about the increased confidence they have in pushing out database changes in very short cycles, I was interested. While we have talked about tSQLt in the past, David's experience of trying to implement test driven development and the results they experienced are worth considering. While the results can be impressive, the cultural shift required to introduce and use the framework is also a point of discussion in this episode. I also asked David why the examples we see are so simple that it almost seems pointless to get started.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/11/28/episode-154-test-driven-development. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Year Two of our beautiful idea--gather together with a group of podcast listeners in a conference type format and find ways for us to connect and help each other grow. I am influenced by what I see in other events; however, I want to add my own flavor to what is currently offered. I want SQL Trail to be different--learning should be attendee-driven rather than event planned. The focus should be on the networking--the hallway track. Everyone should make a new friend. In this episode of the podcast, we have our SQL Trail retrospective and give some thoughts on what next year might entail.
We try to give our honest feedback about what we did well, what could have been improved, and what the attendees reported. I can’t say enough about the help I got from our speakers–Jonathan Stewart, Kevin Feasel, Angela Henry, Monica Rathbun, Megan Longoria and Melissa Coates. They were awesome and the event was much simpler because of them and their commitment. They are truly my compañeros on the SQL Trail.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/11/07/episode-153-sql-trail-2018-retrospective. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Those trained in SSAS may cringe a bit, but a curious thought entered my mind. Many organizations start using data warehouse structure with fact and dimension tables, but never make it to the 'cube' state--actually using analysis services. Admittedly, I don't use SSAS and the occasional reprocessing of a cube or dimension is about my only experience. When Trey Johnson, our guest for this episode, wanted to chat about SSAS, I thought this would be interesting to get his perspective on using SSAS, the future of the service, and how PowerBI just might make it much more accessible.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/11/1/episode-152-do-you-use-analysis-services. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Platform as a service has finally arrived to Microsoft's Azure offering. With the release of Azure SQL Database Managed Instances--quite the mouthful--there is now an option to explore database services without missing all the functionality we didn't have with Azure SQL Database. We are joined by Javier Villegas to discuss his experiences with Managed Instances and why we think this will be one service more organizations will want to start adopting.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/10/24/episode-151-azure-sql-database-managed-instance. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Today we, the SQL Data Partners team, celebrate our 150th podcast episode! We introduce ourselves, talk about what we're doing, our goals for the coming year and answer the SQL Family questions. Come get to know us!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/10/18/episode-150-sql-data-partners-team. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Do you ever feel like you have too many databases to manage? Managing lot of databases can get tricky and in this episode we explore some of the techniques you can use when you need to manage lots of databases. Tracy Boggiano joins us to discuss some of her techniques, as she has managed over 300 instances.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/10/11/episode-149-managing-lots-of-databases. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
SSRS is great -- it comes with SQL Server, provides quite a bit of functionality, but sometimes doesn't always perform well. In this episode we welcome back Bert Wagner as he chats with us about some of the ways he has improved his under-performing reports. Our conversation focuses on SSRS itself -- we are going to assume you can tune the queries in SSMS from previous episodes or the interwebs. What do you think of our list? Did we miss one? Let us know!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/09/27/episode-148-high-performance-ssrs. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Security is always important to data folks and when a new feature like Always Encrypted comes along, it gets your attention. In this episode, we discuss this feature introduced in SQL Server 2016. We are joined by our guest Sam Nasr and he shares an overview and we find it may not cover all the scenarios you might think when you hear the name. Our discussion leads to scenarios in both on-premises and cloud solutions. Joined by Kevin Feasel and Eugene Meidinger, this episode will allow you to be a bit more prepared when you hear someone say all your problems will be solved with Always Encrypted.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/09/19/episode-147-always-encrypted. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
So what is SQL Trail all about? In this episode we invite our MVPs to discuss some of the topics they are ready to share on SQL Trail. We know there are lots of options for training and networking -- this is our iteration on what the experience should be. If after you listen to the episode and want to sign up, you can use our sponsor code "MaconIT" to save $250 of the cost! We hope to see you on the SQL Trail!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/09/12/episode-146-sql-trail-speakers. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this episode we finish up our conversation with Jason and Cathrine and talk about how they keep up with all the changes in data conversions. The advent of Azure services is great, but can be tricky to navigate. We also get to hear Jason's answers to the SQL Family questions.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/09/05/episode-145-is-ssis-still-relevant. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Moving data with SSIS is a forgone conclusion for most of us -- it is part of SQL Server, it has a interface we are somewhat familiar with, and connects to lots of common data sources like csv, excel, and of course SQL Server. Are our needs changing as our environments become more hybrid -- as we introduce cloud services? Are you still building packages the same way you were 10 years ago? Just as our data sources have grown, the capabilities needed to move data around have increased. This episode, with Jason Horner and Cathrine Wilhelmsen, challenges some of the thoughts around data movement and gives some things to think about as new tools are available to move data around.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/08/29/episode-144-is-ssis-still-relevant. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
We frequently talk about how many DBAs are concerned our job may be phased out in the future. This episode discusses one common career path in going from DBA to Data Warehouse Architect and we talk with Thomas LeBlanc about his transition: his decisions, his path and his advice. Many companies can’t afford to staff separate individuals as developers, DBAs, analysists and architects, so there are generally opportunities for most of us to learn these technologies. Whether or not you can fully transition into a completely different job, never stop learning and broadening your knowledge base and abilities.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/08/08/episode-143-transitioning-from-dba-to-data-warehouse-architect. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Are you giving yourself a HEAP of trouble by using tables with no clustered indexes? But it is faster you say . . . because you don't have to worry about the sorting when inserting. Our guest Rick Lowe suggests everything is fast until you decide to SELECT, UPDATE, or DELETE. We talk about why you may or may not want to use HEAP tables. I know I was surprised to get his take on the use of HEAP tables and I think you will be, too. Do you agree with our assessment? Let us know in the comments on the show notes page.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/07/25/episode-142-do-you-have-a-heap-of-hurting. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
In this episode, we chat with David Maxwell about wait stats, what they are and why we should care about them. There are so many different directions we can go and if you have a specific use case you’d like us to consider, let us know and we can include it in a future episode.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/07/04/episode-141-wait-wait-what. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
They're just numbers, right? A date's a date. It's just string data, who cares? I admit I have posed those questions before and only much later did I understand how complicated it can get. Angela Henry, our guest for today, has heard these same phrases many times before and she chats with us to enlighten us on the issue and ways we can get around it. Perhaps you have heard about terms like SARGable and implicit conversions. This episode seeks to tie these terms to one of the very first decisions you have to make about your data -- the data types.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/06/20/episode-140-why-data-types-matter. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
"The move to the cloud is inevitable." Listening to Microsoft marketing and all the MVPs out there, it can certainly seem like we are getting further and further behind each day we aren't use cloud services. Sure, lift and shift of VM resources are straightforward at this point and they are happening with more frequency; however, this doesn't mean everyone is leveraging cloud services. How do you go about trying to prepare for the future when the company you work for isn't quite ready to make the leap? In this episode, we talk with Jim Donahoe about making the transition from our traditional SQL Server environments to using Azure SQL Database. We discuss some of the basics and some of the challenges you will face as you make the migration.
It can be a bit overwhelming to think about all the other services available in Azure. Lift and shift gets us to the 'cloud', but if we want to start doing the cool stuff, we will have to make our data available to start interfacing with these services. We know that cloud providers are pushing more hybrid models as not every system is ready for the cloud. New development initiatives make better candidates for the cloud services and this episode covers the first steps to help you on path to cloud services.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/06/13/episode-139-getting-started-with-sql-server-in-azure. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
I invited our fearless panelists Kevin Feasel and Eugene Meidinger to join me for a podcast discussion. We couldn't agree on a topic so we'll just call this episode Meeting of the Minds. You're welcome.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/06/06/episode-138-meeting-of-the-minds. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by Any Other Name would smell as sweet. We could say the same for analytics -- there are plenty of similar or related words we use to describe the role or process of working with data. In this episode, we talk with Nicki Tinson about her journey into analytics, how others, like you, might break into the fields, and what has remained the same even when the names change. I am joined by Kevin Feasel and Eugene Meidinger, so you know we keep the conversation lively.
Be sure to check out Nicki's Facebook page if you are interested in making the transition into analytics. Tell her Carlos sent you.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/05/30/episode-137-you-want-to-work-with-analytics. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Everybody does things a little differently and this is one of the things I LOVE about the podcast--chatting with others about how they get work done. In this episode I chat with Tom Norman about how he uses Visual Studio for source control, deployments, and keeping his sanity. We explore the setup process and how we have a reverse 80/20 rule when it comes to importing databases with Visual Studio.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/05/23/episode-136-devops-with-visual-studio. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Normally we have one specific topic we focus on each episode. This episode is a little different.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/05/16/episode-135-seinfeld-episode/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
It is not very often the internal codename is used when a product is launched; however, when you think about a database designed with global distribution in mind, CosmosDB makes sense. I was a bit shocked to hear Microsoft was releasing another database technology in 2017; however, the team leading the charge was very impressive and it looked like it was solving problems other database engines could not. In this episode, we talk with Sidney Andrews about the Cosmos platform, what we can expect from the product and how it differs from SQL Server. I think you will find the conversation very interesting.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/05/09/episode-134-cosmosdb. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
While the ability to shrink data files is available in SSMS, the conventional wisdom is don't do it. I was extremely curious when I read an email from our guest suggesting the opposite. In this episode we explain the 'real world' and discuss why you might consider shrinking files and the how it will affect you. Nigel has a great sense of humor and I know you will enjoy today's episode.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/05/02/episode-133-shrinking-files/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Bang! Pow! Crash! Besides just awesome fighting techniques, are there things we can learn from superheroes? My guest, Will Fehringer, gave that very question some thought and came up with some very interesting ideas I thought were worth passing along. Wonder Woman and the Amazonians give us something to thing about preparing for our ultimate goal. Drax, from the Guardians of the Galaxy, gives a great example of the Fool's Choice in conversation. Every good superhero has a value system. What is your value system and how do you enforce it?
One of the biggest challenges to technologies is the Superhero Syndrome. Sure, it feels safe to save the day, but the danger is we might get to the question Mr. Incredible posed "Can you keep this place in order without me? Didn't I just save you people?" The ability to be the superhero all the time is not sustainable, so we won't be able to work alone all the time. The ability to work in teams and trust the process is becoming a bigger and bigger part of what is determining a great IT resource from everyone else.
This episode explores some of these topics and gives some thoughts about how we can apply the lessons super heroes have to battle on a regular basis. What are your thoughts? What can you learn from a superhero?
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/04/19/episode-132-what-can-technologists-learn-from-superheroes. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Big Data. Do you have big data? What does that even mean? In this episode I explore some of the concepts of how organizations can manage their data and what questions you might need to ask before you implement the latest and greatest tool. I am joined by James Serra, Microsoft Cloud Architect, to get his thoughts on implementing cloud solutions, where they can contribute, and why you might not be able to go all cloud. I am interested to see if more traditional DBAs move toward architecture roles and help their organizations manage the various types of data. What types of issues are giving you troubles as you adopt a more diverse data ecosystem?
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/04/11/episode-131-big-data-solutions-in-the-cloud. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Heroes in a half shell, PowerShell! Well, maybe that wasn't the original line, but you know from this program and other places on the internet, PowerShell is all the rage. In this episode, we wanted to chat about other ways people are using PowerShell and we are happy to have Warren Estes talk with us about some of his experiences. Warren shares some ways he has used PowerShell to push the easy button and how it lead to a contribution on the Microsoft SSRS toolkit. We are joined this week by special guest panelist Eugene Meidinger.
If you know the source of the original line, let me know on social media!
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/04/04/episode-130-use-case-for-powershell. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Books online state: “There is nothing a graph database can achieve, which cannot be achieved using a relational database.” Why then are we putting graph technology in SQL Server? To help me answer this question, I invite my friend AZ to chat about the Graph feature in SQL Server 2017 and introduce how graph differs from a relational model. If you have every tried to implement complicated hierarchies in SQL Server, you know what a pain this can be. I, for one, am hopeful this new feature will allow us to tackle the various relationships even though it may be lacking certain features compared with other graph databases.
Are you using graph technology in SQL Server or even another platform? I would be very interested to getting your thoughts on what you like and what you still find painful.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/03/28/episode-129-graph-databases. Have fun on the SQL Trail.
To Devops or not to Devops, that is the question. We've talked before about how the developers have all the cool new tools, but this is slowly changing. For those in development or dare I say agile (gasp!) environments there is more need for automation, but getting there can be a real challenge. In this episode, we chat with John Morehouse about how he actually put into practice automated deployments for the database, some of his challenges, and how long it took to get there.
Are you trying to implement continuous delivery for the database? Let me know. I am very interested to hear your experiences.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/03/21/episode-128-database-doing-devops. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
There has been a remarkable shift introduced in the new features of SQL Server--programming languages have been embedded into the database. This has led to a few "What are you thinking" questions from myself and others. It also opens new opportunities for those working with SQL Server and in this episode, I chat with Andy Roberts and Chris Hyde and discuss the new features of R and Python--why they are included, how data teams are changing, and what this means for the rest of us. As someone who does not and has not ever considered themselves a programmer, I don’t try to tackle any of the technical challenges of the language. We stay safe on the side of ideas, process, with a sprinkle of installation and setup.
One of the most compelling ideas from this conversation is the democratizing of data. Sure, this is not a new concept; however, now with a programming language in the database it will force a thinking realignment for those that traditionally called themselves gatekeepers. Where CLR couldn’t quite do the trick, I think the introduction of these languages is going to require increased collaboration with teams and force administrators to up their game as they tackle challenges of data distribution and data consumption.
I am interested to see what lies ahead and how consumers will use these new features. We already have some insights into R and while I won’t call it a smashing success—it is certainly useful to those who know how to take advantage of it and those numbers appear to be growing. With Python, I think we are increasing the breadth of those who can take advantage of analytics in the database, which I think only bodes well for those who enjoy working with SQL Server.
What about you? Is your team trying to implement R or Python? What new skills have you had to learn because of these changes? Hit me up on social media.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/03/15/episode-127-developing-in-the-database. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you attended a SQLSaturday? They are great events and in this episode we chat with a few organizers about what goes into putting on an event and what they think the future of these events looks like.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/03/08/episode-126-sqlsaturday-edition. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you ever found it difficult to explain how something works to a co-worker? What about reading documentation? We have all been there before and in this episode we chat with Ray Kim about his thoughts on how we can be better at communicating technically.
What is interesting is the number of tools that are now available to help us with communicating ideas; however, we all still struggle with communication.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/02/21/episode-125-you-must-be-an-engineer. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Perhaps you have heard about a runbook--the documented instructions you should follow in the event of a disaster or some situation where an outage occurs. Instructions are great for IT folks as they give a reference to follow--and they don't freak out even if we might. They don't, however, include instructions for everyone--what about the folks that aren't tapping away on the keyboard? In this episode, we chat with Greg Moore about his experience in emergency situations outside of IT and how we might apply these principles in our environment.
Whether you are directly in the line of fire or support those that do, we think you will find this conversation interesting.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/02/13/episode-124-beyond-the-runbook-dr-organization. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Listener Eduardo Cervantes wanted to get our take on what developers should do when they get admin access to a database. We take on this challenge and I give 5 points you might consider if you are a developer with admin access to the SQL Server. As Uncle Ben in Spiderman quotes, "With great power comes great responsibility." We hope you use yours wisely.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/02/14/episode-123-top-5-things-to-know-when-getting-admin-access. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Does not play well with others. Is this description appropriate for some of the queries in your database? In this episode, we explore the role behind isolation levels--why they are important, what they help prevent, and why so many people try to get around the rules they try to enforce.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/20/episode-122-isolation-levels. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
I have heard it said "People don't quit jobs--they quit managers". At a recent event, I decided to ask people what they thought the qualities of a good manager are. Perhaps you aren't thinking of getting into management; however, at some point in your career you will have the opportunity to lead. We share your thoughts and comment on the challenges of having the qualities of a good manager.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/14/episode-121-what-makes-a-good-manager. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Shouldn't they have fixed that instead of putting out all these new features? That might be what you are thought when you saw the title for today's episode. SQL Injection is still a big deal in today's databases and we are pleased to have Bert Wagner on the program to talk with us about how it can affect you and the applications you protect.
One of the most difficult aspects to deal with SQL Injection is to decide who is responsible for dealing with it? Bert does a great job giving us some insights on what he has seen work and we invite you to give us your comments about how you have gone about trying to evade a SQL Injection attack.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/12/06/episode-120-sql-injection. Have fun on the SQL trail!
At first glance you might think our podcast topic is from way out in left field; however, as you think about it there are a number of reasons we should be talking about GitHub. Even if you don't need a public source control repository for creating code, GitHub is becoming the preferred place for creators to publish their content and the ability to interact with other is extremely value. In this episode we give some of our thoughts around getting started with GitHub and how it might differ from some of the other options out there.
Don't forget to leave your 'Tips and Tricks' on the podcast page. If we get enough submissions, we will start that new segment in January.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/29/episode-119-should-i-get-involved-with-github. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
After having attended PASS Summit and seeing all the new features coming it out, it can be very easy to overlook the basics--they are boring. These features have been around forever. This may be true, but they still play an important role and ignoring them won't help get you those fancy new features any time soon.
In this episode, our topic is index maintenance, with an emphasis on what has changed or what might change. Is the query store feature going to impact the way we maintain our indexes? We invite one our favorite guests, Sean McCown back to talk with us and give some of his thoughts.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/24/index-maintenance. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Have you ever had a week without a Wednesday? Me neither, so for this episode, we recap our experience at PASS Summit and talk about all the amazing compañeros we met and give some thoughts around our very first meetup. It was so much fun to meet everyone and both Steve and I gave sessions, which was a great experience--and a first for me.
One, we both realized after the fact is, we are not good at social media or taking pictures! We apologize we don't have a bit more to share on that front, but hey--we do have faces for radio.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/15/episode-117-pass-summit-retrospective/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
If you have ever worked with Microsoft support, you probably came across the PssDiag tool they use to collect information about your environment. My experience with the tool is it always seemed, well--a bit clunky. Now, it does collect lots of information and seemed to be a bit overwhelming when I was first a DBA. Fast forward a few years and PssDiag was not a tool I use anymore and was not sure if anyone outside of Microsoft was using it. I run into Jared Poche in Raleigh and he mentions he really likes the tool and mentions some of the improvements they have made over the years. Well, you can guess where this is heading.
We talk with Jared about his experience with the tool and cover some of the basics about how you might go about using this tool in your environment. There are two pieces to this tool, the first is the utility that collects the data and the second is the reporting piece SQL Nexus.
Are you using PssDiag? Let us know if the comments below.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/11/07/episode-116-are-people-still-using-pssdiag. Have fun on the SQL trail!
It was a beautiful idea. Gather together with a group of our podcast listeners in a conference type format and find ways for us to connect and help each grow. I had seen it down in other events; however, I wanted to add my own flavor. I wanted this to be different. While the event turned out great and we got good marks from the attendees, we didn't have the response we were hoping for. In this episode of the podcast, we have our companero conference retrospective.
We try to give our honest feedback about what we did well, what could have been improved, and what the attendees reported. I can't say enough about the help I got from our speakers--Jonathan Stewart, Kevin Feasel, Randolph West, Tracy Boggiano, and Doug Purnell. They were awesome and the event was much simpler because of them and their commitment. They are truly my companeros on the SQL trail.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/10/31/episode-115-the-companero-conference-retrospective. Have fun on the SQL trail!
One of the advantages to a small conference is the ability to take attendee feedback and put it in place during the conference. We actually made time for the attendees to pick topics they wanted to discuss and this episodes comes from one of our attendees Aaron Hayes.
It can be very tempting to think of the good life of consulting. I almost liken it to playing the lottery--what am I going to do with all that time and money? While the odds on successful consulting are a bit higher than the lottery, just saying you are a consultant won't automatically bring in the clients.
The reasons data professionals get into consulting are varied and in this episode we are joined by Randolph West and Jonathan Stewart, former podcast guests, to talk about the reasons we started consulting and some of the challenges along with our decision.
From my own personal experience, working for yourself--whether you consider yourself a contractor or a consultant--is very rewarding but demanding work. There is no one to tell you want to do, but there are very few security nets as well. One of the most important ideas I can suggest for those who want to own their own business is--forget the technology, how are you going to help other people? If you are ok with the idea of focusing on others, then there are great opportunities in store.
Do you have thoughts about jumping into technology? Let us know in the comments below.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/10/20/episode-114-how-do-you-start-consulting. Have fun on the SQL trail!
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Those words are attributed to Issac Newton and they are fitting for the way I was feeling recently as I thought back to those who have helped me in my career. While we might always want things to be better, as technologies we have it pretty good. There are unnumbered people who have dedicated untold amounts of time so we can have the tech available to us. We take a moment to think about those who have paved the way for us to be where we are now.
Whose shoulders are you standing on? Let us know in the comments below.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/10/11/giants/. Have fun on the SQL trail!
When listener Mel Vargas first suggested the topic of patching, I was not sure this would work as a topic; however, the Equifax story had just developed and there are many other security related issues that could be prevented with patching. Match that with our guest, Robert Davis, who just happened to publish some articles on patching and I decided we needed to do this episode.
I should never have doubted this as topic. While we are a bit more protected in SQL Server than others, the security threat is still real and this is something everyone has to go through. Robert presents us with some interesting details on how he goes about patching and we think you will find the episode compelling.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/10/04/episode-112-keeping-up-with-patching/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Sometimes just getting approval to attend a conference is a challenge, but getting the green light isn't the only thing you should plan for. Sure, you want to learn some things--but a google search can teach you too. In fact this week we are hearing about new features and functionality from the Ignite event--and I am catching all of it in my bunny slippers.
Why attend a conference then?
Conference season is upon us and Steve and I share some thoughts on why we attend conferences and some of the strategies we have used in the past.
The show notes from today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/09/28/episode-111-how-do-you-prepare-for-conferences/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
As you work with other people, you will experience resistance when you suggest changes and want to implement something new. Why is this?
One podcast listener shared an experience where a problem was occurring. The suggested a solution. The idea was rejected. No solution presented itself and the idea was submitted various times. When nothing else was working, the idea was finally implemented.
The suggested change successfully helped the situation. Victory!
Later, another issue arose and a similar suggestion was made. The expectation was the suggestion would be well received; however, this was not the case. The idea was still met with hostile resistance.
Have you faced a situation like this before? Why wasn't there an trust built because of the first recommendation?
Our conversation for today's episode centers around the idea of building trust on the teams you work with. As most our listeners are in the data platform space, we thought it would be a good idea to reach outside our community to folks we might receive the most pushback from--developers. We are happy to have Richard Campbell on the show with us today. Richard is the co-host of the .NET rocks podcast and you might recognize him from one of his many Channel9 videos.
We chat with Richard about how we can build trust and some common ways we attempt to show authority can backfire on us and actually cause more problems. We talk about some of the ways those we trust have gone about earning our trust. I know you enjoy this episode.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/09/20/episode-110-how-do-i-build-trust-with-my-team/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
In episode 64 we interviewed Patrick Thomas, the program manager for the MCP program which includes certifications. There continues to be quite a bit of discussion around certifications, so it only makes sense that we give our take on the matter. Both Steve and I are certified, so this may give away some of our thoughts.
Certification is a tricky thing. Much of the value you get out of a certification is dependent on where you on in your career and what your next step is going to be. This is going to be different for every person, so this decision is one that only you can make. This can make a decision on which certification to get and even when to get it a challenge.
Our conversation really revolves around what a certification will get you and what it won't help you with. Do you agree with our list? Let us know!
After a brief hiatus, we are back on the air to continue the conversation and let me tell you--we have a great conversation lined up for this episode. The discussion around what will happen to the relational database, and by extension us as administrators continues to get quite a bit of traction. Even within SQL Server, we are starting to see more features that don't fit the traditional relational mode and a podcast listener inquired about getting our thoughts. As I thought about a guest for this episode, I didn't want to get someone tied to a product. They, like me, would be biased and I wanted to get someone a bit removed from the situation.
Our guest today is Andrew Snodgrass, the research vice president at Directions and we chat about the future of the relational database and what the future of the data environment we manage might look like. I hope you will find his insights valuable as an outsider. While we don't get into the specifics of what databases are mostly like to be around, Andrew does give us administrator some idea's on what technologies we should start exploring.
What are your thoughts around the future of the relational database? Join the conversation and let us know!
Data analytics is all anyone seems to talk about anymore. We've even caught the bug at SQL Data Partners and have started working with data platform MVP César Oviedo from Costa Rica. César has been helping us on some projects and we thought it was time we introduced him to everyone. On the Spanish front, he has been very busy putting out YouTube videos and publishing content for BI LATAM (Latin America). We invite him on the show to introduce himself and our conversation turns to the idea of BI for the little guy--smaller organizations that need to take advantage of analytics and how the ecosystem is changing to support them.
We are happy to introduce César to you and know you will enjoy hearing from in this episode and future episodes.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/08/02/bi-for-the-little-guy/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
User: What was that record before it was updated?
Me: I don't know. Maybe I could restore a backup?
User: Really? You have to do all that? It is just one record.
Me: (under my breath) Yes, a record YOU updated.
If you have ever had a conversation like this you know how difficult it can be to implement auditing of records as they change. With temporal tables, a new feature, we have the ability to track point in time information about a record without the huge expense of setting up auditing and tracking. While you won't want to use this on every table, when there are tables with sensitive data you want to audit from time to time, this feature will come in handy. We are happy to have Randolph back on the program with us to talk about this new feature.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/25/episode-106-temporal-tables/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
How can you tell when a change is enough of a change? How do you know you didn’t make too big of a change? Steve and I discuss some thoughts around what you might look for when you make certain changes. Some of the components we cover include Max degree of parallelism, cxpackets, virtual log files, the number of log files for a database, backup retention and memory.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/18/enough/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Do you have any experience with [Insert random technology]? Your heart starts to race and your palms get a little sweaty. You don’t want to say no–we’re tech folks–we know stuff, but there are so many new things to learn! How are you supposed to keep up with it all? In this episode, we chat with Eugene Meidinger about his thoughts on keeping up and his ideas on the most important learning components.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/07/keeping-up-with-technology/ and we hope to see you on the SQL trail.
When we write our queries to the database, SQL Server has to go and figure out the best way to go and bring back the data you asked for. A query plan is created to help SQL Server remember how to get the data for this query. It takes time to make these queries, so the database wants to limit the number of times it has to create the plans so it will try to reuse the plan as much as possible.
Our topic for today's episode is query plan reuse and the pros and cons with this concept. We will also touch on the concept of parameter sniffing--a technique SQL Server uses to try and figure out the best values to use for the execution plan with the hopes the plan will help the most queries. Special thanks to James Youkhanis for the suggestion.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/04/episode-103-plan-reuse/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
One of the newer features in SQL Server is availability groups, which can help solve a number of business problems. As administrators, availability groups introduce some complexity as we are tasked to make sure the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) can be meet for these servers. The complexity comes because we have different instances that must work together, but they don't always see eye to eye. In this episode, we chat with Tracy Boggiano of channeladvisor about how they go about monitoring their availability groups and the pros and cons of the out of the box tools. Our discussion touches on process of the availability group process and Tracy has posted her scripts on her bog for you use as you look at reviewing your environments. I think you will enjoy this discussion.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/06/29/episode-102-monitoring-availability-groups/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Listener Cody Ford wrote in and asked if we could share some thoughts on getting familiar with an unfamiliar database. While we have done episodes in the past on best practices, this episode takes the approach of what we should look for on a server that is new to us--the components we should document and then review for potential updates.
Do you agree with our list? Let us know on by leaving a comment on the show notes page.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/06/07/inspect-new-database/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Something a bit strange happened in episode 100--almost like something out of the twilight zone, but don't take our word for it. Check out our latest episode as tell some of the stories that led up today.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/06/14/episode-100-listener-qa-c144/ and have fun on the SQL trail
Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome) is a term coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes referring to high-achieving individuals marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud". In this episode of the SQL Data Partners podcast, we take on a topic that is not technical; however, might play a very important role in some of the opportunities we take--or miss out on. Today's guest is Mindy Curnutt, a 3x MVP and a real chance taker as she recently decided to become independently employed.
In this episode we talk through the idea of imposter syndrome and give some examples of how it affects us, but we also try and tackle ways we can identify it and steps to help us overcome. I think you are going to find this episode very interesting and we hope you enjoy it.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/06/07/episode-99-imposter-syndrome/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
In a recent SQLSaturday conference, I walked into the speakers room and asked the question--What is the first thing you change after you install SQL Server? It was interesting to get their take on the server setup and I think you will enjoy the conversation. There are various answers on this one but some of the speakers have mentioned stuffs like set auto grow files, SQL Prompt, SQL parameter class and max memory among others. I would like to thank Kevin Feasel, Jonathan Stewart, Eugene Meidinger, Raymond Kim, Tracy Boggiano, Mindy Curnutt, Thomas Grohser, and Vladimir Oselsky for their suggestions.
The shownotes can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/06/01/episode-98-the-first-change/
If you have ever been responsible for a replication environment, you know what a pain that can be. Many of the guests of the show will point out their frustration with replication and many are loathe to use it--myself included; however, there are a few brave souls out in the world who do use replication regularly--and even use it well. Chuck Lathrope is our guest today and he talks us through some of the components of replication and why we might not need to be so skittish about this long time feature.
We cover all the basics including an overview of Transactional Replication, Merge Replication, Peer-to-Peer replication and Snapshot Replication, the concept of publisher, distributor and subscriber in relation to replication. The most important piece is Chuck gives us some good business cases for why we might use replication and I think you will find the discussion interesting. Thanks for joining us on the SQL trail!
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/05/24/episode-97-sql-server-replication/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Have you ever created something and wanted to share it with others with the hope they will contribute and make it better? Sites like the new defunct codeplex and GitHub are full of functionality people want to share and work with others on; however, many projects remain dormant. What are the characteristics that create an environment where people want to contribute to your project? Steve and I discuss a few ideas and we interview two very successful community project leaders in Brent Ozar and Chrissy LeMarie about how they got started and what it takes to put together a good community project.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/05/10/community-tools/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Big data is term we have been hearing frequently as of late and this might cause some concern for us in the SQL Server space. Micrsoft has introduced some new functionality to help connect different data stores with PolyBase. We are happy to have Kevin Feasel from ChannelAdvisor back with us and Kevin will discuss some of the basics around what PolyBase does. We’ll be discussing a lot about integrations using PolyBase specifically on Hadoop and Azure SQL Blob Storage. We also touch on some of the technologies that will be supported in the future.
For those looking at implementing both structured and unstructured data stores, PolyBase will be a way to help bring these environments together. Kevin gives us a great overview and we think you will enjoy this episode.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/05/03/episode-95-polybase/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
There are lots of reporting options and I watch SQL Server move up the Gartner magic quantrant, I saw another reporting tool moving up as well--Qlik. In this episode we will start by sharing information about Qlik, what it is and some background in the event it gets adopted at your company. Today we are delighted to have Michael Armentrout as our guest. Michael is a Microsoft SQL Server DBA as well as the developer of QlikView and we discuss the fundamentals of QlikView such as the associative model, in-memory, compression and sharing among others. Also we will hear from Michael the difference between QlikView and QlikSense, and some of the “competitors”.
Michael share some of his thoughts on using the technology and how it is different from the traditional Microsoft stack. We think you will find it interesting.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/04/27/qlik/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
We all make them and sometimes it can be painful. Making and sharing mistakes is one of the most powerful tools for learning; However, most of us do all they can to avoid and hide those mistakes. In this episode, Steve and I talk about making mistakes and share some thoughts around how we might improve how to respond when we don't do something quite right.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/04/25/episode-93-making-mistakes/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
At one time there were two different products named SSDT and that was confusing for lots of folks. and we’re pleased to have Kevin Cunnane, the program manager for SSDT, as our guest. We wanted to ask him about some of the new database features in Visual Studio and what kind of problems they are looking to solve.
We think it is awesome the Microsoft folks will take some time our there their schedules to talk with us and we think you will this episode an interesting discussion on the future of database tooling.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/04/18/episode-92-ssdt/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
We all want an easy button. It is human nature. We heard quite a bit about how easy PowerShell will make everything, but for those of us who aren't programmers, it can be a bit intimidating to get started. Luckily for us, we have what is shaping up to be the closest thing to an easy button for DBAs I have found for PowerShell tools from the folks at dbatools.io. We invite some of the team to chat with us about their tool, how they got started and the types of problems they are looking to solve.
In this episode, Chrissy will be talking about how DBA Tools started from just being a simple migration tool until it became a useful tool solving various SQL related issues. The team will discuss the other various situations where DBA Tools can really be helpful and how they manage contributions from over 30 people which leads us to talk about GitHub, the open source community, and their experiences in updating versions of DBA Tools and how they encourage contributors in the project.
Chrissy, Rob, Constantine, and Aaron were super excited to talk with us and we loved their energy and think you will enjoy this episode.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/04/12/episode-91-dba-tools/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
DBCC CheckDB. It is a simple command, but one that can cause database contention, dba stress, confusing results, dba elation, and everything in between. At one time we will all have to face the results of having a corruption issue and we’re delighted to have Sean McCown with us again to discuss the ins and outs of the issues of this command. If you can remember, Sean was our guest in Episode 41. He is an SQL Server MVP with more than 15 years experience.
We talk with Sean about how frequent issues we have with maintenance like we often we should run CheckDB on our databases or what happens when I can only check one database during my window. While we don't end up discussing the command as much, we definitely review all aspects of making sure it can run in ALL environments.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/04/05/dbcc-checkdb/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
One of the neat benefits of putting the podcast together is talking to a wide spectrum of folks with varied backgrounds. As we get more feedback from listeners, the idea of the Lone DBA emerged. The Lone DBA is someone who is the only person responsible for database administration at their company. These tasks may have been assigned or they may have simply been required to help support an application. Steve and I thought we should explore this a bit and to help give us some context, we invited Monica Rathbun to chat with us about some of the challenges she’s faced.
Besides the challenges, Monica shares tactics and techniques to juggle many tasks while being a lone DBA. This includes using social media as a way of building connections with different experts, getting the right tools for the organization’s needs and making your boss your supporter. Have your own perspective on this? Let us know in the show notes for the episode.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/03/28/episode-89-lone-dba/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Why can't we just get along? There can be a real love/hate relationship between those of us with data responsibilities and those who are responsible for SharePoint environments. We want to provide good service to those environments, but there are SO MANY things we can't do on a SharePoint database. To see how the other half lives, we invited Todd Klindt onto the program to give us his thoughts on how we can all get along a bit better.
Because Todd suggests the “SQL and SharePoint communities should understand each other a little better”, we will try to tackle some of the obstacles the teams face so you can be better armed to support your SharePoint team.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/08/episode-88-sharepoint/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Why do some features get all the fun? I would like to be a fly on the wall at some of the Microsoft feature development meetings. There are many very cool features that didn't get quite enough love to get the adoption they deserve. In this episode we are talking about Resource Governor and before you roll your eyes, you may be interested to know some of the side benefits of using the feature. We are joined by Mark Wilkinson from channeladvisor to give us an overview of the feature and how they use it to manage SQL resources and workloads.
One interesting story is how their team won the query challenge last PASS summit using Resource Governor so it is pretty powerful. Mark will also share his experiences using Resource Governor in different working environments. He will also be discussing the basics and tips about building the classifier function of Resource Governor. Furthermore, we will go through setting up I/O caps, resource pools and workloads, and the NUMA node affinity.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/08/episode-87-resource-governor/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Based on listener feedback we got from episode 72, a request was made to have a conversation about testing frameworks and in this episode we are going to focus on tSQLt. We are pleased to have Sebastian Meine, the creator of the tSQLt unit testing framework, on the podcast with us. We talk about the basic principles of tSQLt Framework when it comes to unit testing. Sebastian will also be discussing about the do’s and don’ts as well as the different aspects to be considered when using the framework. Sebastian makes the case for why you should take the time to create unit tests and we discuss the challenges culture might play into the use of the framework.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/03/03/episode-86-tsqlt/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Have you done your migration to SQL Server 2016 yet? Don’t worry—you aren’t alone. With all the glory of new features and improved performance, not all upgrades are equal. In this episode we talk with Javier Villegas who returns from episode 2 to talk about some of the issues he ran into on the upgrade to 2016. He stumbled on a process that normally runs for 7 minutes prior to the upgrade and then 26 hours after the upgrade. While it all worked out, he shares the issues he had and gives us a reminder that testing has not been deprecated.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/01/25/speedbumps/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
The Microsoft Most Valued Professional or MVP award--while it’s hard work and dedication to be called an MVP, what are the benefits? Well, Kathi Kellenberger is a great member of the SQL community, traveling to many SQL Saturdays, speaking at conferences about SQL server, and this time she is here with us to tell us what it really means to be an MVP and the great journey it has been to becoming one.
Do you actually know the percentage between men and women MVPs in the world and US? How many posts do MVPs have on forums, helping others? How do they keep track of all the SQL Saturdays, User Groups, conferences they have been to? Kathi will be sharing her story, the process that she went through until she became an MVP, how you get nominated, and how to get renewed!
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/22/episode-84-mvp/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
We’ve all been there – you have some data and you need to make it pretty for the report. With the all the new reporting options you have probably been tempted to find a new way to visually present information. In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about data visualizations and our guest, Jonathan Stewart, has some issues with the way we currently go about it. Jonathan has been on the show as a panelist and I have really enjoyed his perspective on things so we invited him on the program to discuss some ways you can go about improving the data visualization of your reports, without adding additional burden on process.
Psychology plays a big role in data visualization. To make a good report, before even starting your tool, you should be able to summarize what the report presents. One of the major aspects of psychology is color and how we perceive it. Jonathan explains how we can use this while visualizing data. We discuss color blindness and I haven't heard this discussed too much elsewhere and I was curious to know how we can solve this problem with an easy button.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/15/episode-83-data-visualizations/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
In the previous episode we discussed the basics of using indexes, what they are, how to use them, along with some common problems and solutions. One of the problems you will certainly face as time passes is index fragmentation. While indexes will certainly help your database perform well, they do require care and feeding--meaning there is some administrative overhead.
In this episode, we continue our conversation with Randolph West and discuss what we can do to take care of indexes and keep them well maintained over time. There is an option to use default maintenance plans and to do fragmentation and updating statistics, but should you use them? What are the alternatives? We didn’t forget to consider strategies for deciding which indexes to keep and which can be dropped.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/08/episode-82-indexes-part-2/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Part of what we like to do on podcast is to present topics and discuss different ways you might use features. In this episode, we go back to basics and discuss indexes. Like most topics, we made sure to explain all the important aspects. Because this is a such broad topic, we decided to carry this over into our next episode as well. Using the phone book as an example, we chat with our guest Randolph West and explain heaps, non-clustered indexes, and clustered indexes. We also explain best practices to use them when creating new tables.
We didn’t forget to cover the problems you might run into. For example, you might not think about indexes until your data grows very large. Sure, you can attempt to resolve the problem by moving to SSD’s and increasing memory, but this will push the issue further in the future. In this episode, we will discuss considerations for indexes and why database architecture is so important.
We would like to hear your opinions. What are your strategies when using indexes? Use the hashtag #sqlpodcast and let us know!
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/02/01/episode-81/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
When was the last time you deployed code and then found an issue with the version of a stored procedure, a setting, or even a service pack? While we data folk don't generally have as much trouble with environment issues are our developer counterparts, it can still be a big deal. Spinning up a VM may not be such a big deal anymore; however, most of us still have to request one and wait. What if you could take care of the OS and the SQL Server and not worry about setting up another development environment? Our guest today is Andrew Pruski and he talks to us about how he is using containers to support his environments and the flexibility it provides to his and his co-workers.
While the Linux containers seem to get lots of love, one unique thing about Andrew's setup is he is running Windows containers with older versions of SQL Server. What is cool to me is there are tools out there that can help us folks running windows get up and running without having to wait on our infrastructure to upgrade to Windows server 2016. If you are using containers, I would love to hear about it. Use the hastag #sqlpodcast and let us know!
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/01/24/sql-server-containers/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
Although the SSIS Catalog DB is created with management studio, it does not behave like other databases. Our conversation in this episode revolves around the catalog, SSIS packages, and some of the complexities of migrating packages. Steve and I are excited to chat with our guest Andy Leonard about his thoughts on the catalog and how this feature provides some really interesting benefits for ETL architecture.
The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/01/17/episode-79-ssis-catalog/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
As database administrators, we will all upgrade our environments at some point; however, we don't normally have the opportunity to upgrade to the next version of SQL Server before it becomes available to everyone else. In this weeks episode of the podcast, Steve and I chat with Brian Carrig about the journey channeladvisor took to implement SQL Server 2016 in their environment, that it was like working with the SQLCAT team, and how they go about making use of some of the new features. Brian shares with us some of the struggles they were having along with how the 2016 version helped address these issues.
Brian invites everyone to upvote his connect item which you can find on the shownotes
The show notes are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/01/11/conversionto2016/ and have fun on the SQL trail!
We invited Paul Turley on the show to chat with us about some of the new features in SQL Server reporting services, but were pleasantly surprised to have the conversation take a different direction. Paul talks about some of the new training available for those interested in visualizations and why this community can be hard to define--and connect with. There are so many visualization options and even within Microsoft we have many products that overlap in functionality. In addition to talking about the pick list items of new features, Paul gives some guidance and why you should choose certain products and what makes good use case scenarios for some of the new features.
With the new analytics features now available in SQL Server 2016 via SP1, I think there is going to be additional requirements for data professionals to provide better analytics features and this episode is a good starter for how to frame those conversations.
Show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/01/03/reporting-improvements/ and have fun on the SQL trail!
Availability groups provide some exciting features in mixing high availability and disaster recovery; however, from a performance consideration, there are a few drawbacks. With the advances in SQL Server 2016, our guest Jimmy May from SanDisk, set out to test the features and see if they could get some really high performance out of an availability group with two synchronous replicas. In this episode he talks with us about some of his findings and some of the pains associated with getting there.
Show notes are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/12/31/availability-group-improvements/ and have fun on the SQL trail!
Storage testing and validation is something what we to add under roles and responsibilities as DBAs. Every database we ever manage is going to need one, but how often do we kick the tires? Many times we’re basically told to go verify that array or we’re doing this POC, we’re testing this new storage, but are we really only testing connectivity? In this episode of the podcast, we chat with Argenis Fernandez about how he goes about testing a SAN array and the important metrics you should consider for your storage. If you are still using SQLIO or even Diskspeed to test the IO for your SQL Server, don't miss today's episode.
The shownotes for today's episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/12/21/episode-75-testing-storage-devices/ and have fun on the SQL trail.
As the year 2016 comes to a close, Steve and I share our thoughts on our accomplishments for the year and what lies in store for 2017.
At some point all data administrators will have to tune their environments and there are may ways you might go about that. In this episode, we talk with Pinal Dave about how he does performance tuning and the thought process behind the approach.
In the data space we're hearing a lot about dev ops, continuous integration and the programmers are getting a lot of love there with lots of tools to help them; however, if you're on the data side--not so much. If you're running Agile in your environment and then you're trying to do data warehousing or other data development we're not quite getting the same love. Sure, there are a couple of unit testing software offerings out there, but it's a little bit cumbersome. This episode our conversation focuses on testing automation in a business intelligence or data warehouse environment--even in an Agile system. Our guest is Lynn Winterboer and she has some interesting thoughts at the intersection of business users, data professionals and tools.
Show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/12/03/episode-72-testing-automation-for-business-intelligence/
It is easy to feel like the odd man (or gal) out in the SQL Community. We are constantly hearing about new features, products, and architectures and our companies may not always have the same enthusiasm when we describe what could be.
This is probably even more true in the Analytics space as much of the marketing has been pointed in that direction. Even PASS tried to create a conference just for Analytics. While there are some amazing new technologies out there--we might--GASP--not need them in every scenario.
Our guest today is Kevin Wilkie, a BI architect with Innovative Architects and he talks to us about some of the tools he uses and spoiler--they aren't all that fancy. He also talks with us about how he manages the tech and business users so each feels comfortable and each can get their work done.
The show notes for today's episode are at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/11/23/BI-Tools/ and we'll see you on the SQL trail!
In the keynote of PASS summit 2016 Rohan Kumar, the program manager for SQL Server proudly displayed a database restore to a SQL Server instance installed on Linux. What makes this all even more interesting is the database was sourced from a Windows server. While it might not sound like much, the number of operating systems SQL Server runs on has now doubled. This is no small feat and our guest today Travis Wright is the program manager for the SQL Server on Linux migration. While I have to admit I was not super excited about the news when it came out last year, I am definitely more interested and think there is a huge opportunity for SQL Server administrators to get access to jobs they wouldn’t have before. I know you will enjoy this interview with Travis.
Get the Linux for the preview and other items on the show notes page http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/11/16/sql-server-on-linux/ and have fun on the SQL trail!
We have all been there–next, next, next–let’s just get this install done. While there are many ways to get SQL Server installed on a server, the real impact is in the way we administer the database and when we want to get good performance. Listener James Youkhanis asked us about our install checklist and Steve and I realized we hadn’t made one public before. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners podcast, we talk about some of the settings we are looking for when we set up a server. We don’t have time to reference every single item, but hit some highlights. Your list might differ slightly, but our list has been built from the experiences we have seen over time from various installations. We love to other opinions, so give us your thoughts!
The show notes for today's episode and the install checklist are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/11/09/sql-server-install-checklist/. Have fun on the SQL trail compañeros!
For all of us working with data, we know that we work no only with SQL Server but the suite of tools around the SQL Server engine. In this episode, we share some thoughts around SSIS administration, which is the most popular ETL tool in the Microsoft stack. Just like the SQL Server engine, many times the defaults are taken and in this episode we give some thoughts around logging, package execution, and notification with our guest Ravi Kumar. With the every expanding functionality of SSIS, Steve and I found this discussion insightful as we think about supporting an SSIS environment and ways we can educate package developers.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/10/15/ssis-administration/ Have fun on the SQL trail!
Compañeros! The good organizers SQLSaturday in Pittsburgh allowed me to take a slot on the schedule and opened up the podcast for a little Q&A session and I was super happy with the results. We had several SQL Server pros come and our conversation was around one central issue--testing in your development environment. We came at from a setup perspective, but also from a how to compare apples and oranges when your hardware is different. Because we had a developer ask the question, I opted to call this episode “Dear Developer”. Hear from Microsoft MVPs and SQL Server consultants such as Allen White, Kevin Feasel, Jonathan Stewart, Tim McAliley and others give their thoughts on this subject. At the very least you will have a few more ideas on where to start looking for potential options to your testing after listening to this episode.
The show notes for todays episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/10/15/deardeveloper/
After talking with Patrick Thomas in episode 64, I was introduced to Microsoft's newest learning curriculum, the Microsoft academy, and their first offering in data science. In this episode, I talk with one of the lead course writers Graeme Malcolm about the new program. Microsoft consulted data scientists along with several companies to identify the core skills they need to be successful. A curriculum was developed to teach these functional and technical skills, combining highly rated online courses with hands-on labs, concluding in a final capstone project. This episode talks about the new program and what is next for Microsoft learning.
The show notes for today's episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/10/18/professional-program/ and we'll see you on the SQL trail!
This week on the SQL Trail, Steve and I chat with Jason Horner about building a good data architecture. When talking about a data warehouse architecture, or even just a data architecture, people often think about building the data warehouse and specifying the server hardware, building the ETL, things like that--they tend to lose sight of the larger picture of data architecture. Jason gives us his “four pillars of data warehouse architecture” and how each of them impacts what you are able to do from a reporting prospective.
We are super excited to have Jason on the show with us this week. You can catch the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/10/03/data-architecture/ and we'll see you on the SQL trail.
Have you ever thought that Microsoft certifications were a waste of time? Depending on where you are on the experience scale, certifications still play a large role in hiring and career development. In Episode 64 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast I talk to Patrick Thomas the program manager for the MCT and MCP programs and the role they play at Microsoft and in what way they continue to provide value, including what’s in store for data science learners and what he thinks of the Microsoft purchase of LinkedIn.
The show notes are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/10/03/microsoft-mcp/ and we'll see you on the SQL trail!
Availability groups provide both high availability features and disaster recovery options, but they also have several areas you must be aware so you don't introduce more risk into your environment. The major advantage is availability groups allow for you to fail over more than one database at a time. In Episode 59 we talked about general data availability options and in this episode we focus on the new features of Availability Groups in 2016 and how data availability options have changed with our guest John Sterrett. John shares his experience getting a large database to a highly available situation along with some other ways to use availability groups.
Show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/09/21/episode-63-high-availability/ Have fun on the SQL trail.
Have you heard the buzz around the Cortana Intelligence Suite? It seems like it is all the rage these days and Microsoft is coming out with lots of new features in this space. In Episode 62, Steve and I interview Melissa Coates, AKA “SQLChick”. We chat about the history of Cortana, about the tools it encompasses, and why you might implement parts of the suite in your organization.
Show notes for today's episode are found at http://sqldatapartners.com/cortana If you are using Cortana, we would love to hear about it on the show notes for today's episode.
Do you dread the idea of going to the project post-mortem? Is it because you have to spend tons of time prepping your defenses for the onslaught? This week we chat with Russ Thomas and get his take on what makes a good debrief and where he got some of his ideas. These concepts are intended to make the whole team better so if you like what you hear, pass this along to other in your group and perhaps your debriefs can help everyone.
The show notes for today's episodes are at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/09/05/debrief/ where you can get links to information Russ points to in this episode. Have fun on the SQL trail compañeros!
When Microsoft introduced the Azure Data Lake, they included a new language, U-SQL, for Big Data processing as part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite. U-SQL plays a role in the streaming analytics space–primarily in the Azure environment. We break down some of the basics of U-SQL, then we’ll discuss the use cases that might make it an effective addition to your database toolbox--especially if you know C#.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http:\sqldatapartners.com\usql Have fun on the SQL trail, compañeros!
Have you ever wondered what the best option is for making your data available in your environment? Listener Chris Hendon asked us to talk about differences between Availability groups, mirroring, log shipping, and replication. Today on the SQL Trail Steve and I chat with Andy Mallon and Mariano Kovo about these topics. We cover each topic in detail and explain the positives and negatives of each one. Join us, for another great episode.
The show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/08/24/data-availability/
With all the changes in technology, how do you stay up to date with your technical learning? This is a question we have been asking our guests the last several episodes and in this episode we, the hosts, attempt to answer this question and Carlos and Steve give some thoughts on how we stay up to date. We discuss four ways to keep up. If all else fails, you can follow this old adage. "It's know WHAT you know, it's not WHO you know--it's WHAT you know about WHO you know."
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/learning.
Compañeros, in Episode 57 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast we take a page from the SQL Server Radio podcast where they list the 50 worst feature and discuss SQLFamily question 2 about what SQL Server features we think could improve. We talk about the redundancy of default maintenance plans, the pain of autogrowth and autoshrink, why NO LOCK hints shouldn't be used, what's so bad about Activity Monitor, and more. It should be noted here, that we LOVE SQL Server, we just being a bit picky with some of the tools. :)
What feature do you want to change? Do you disagree with our list? Let us know on the show notes page or using the hastag #SQLPodcast
The show notes for today's episode are at http://sqldatapartners.com/worstfeatures
I found myself in Columbus Ohio at the SQLSaturday event and thought I'd do a live panel discussion about our Favorite SQL Server 2016 Features--what we are most excited about. We also discuss the "Microsoft paradigm shift" and how the hybrid model is likely to stick around for a long time. Oh, and Scott Klein from Channel 9 shows up and gives us his two cents. You just never know what is going to come out of the wood work.
SQL Server reporting services hasn't changed in what seems like 10 years. The rest of the reporting environment at Microsoft has seen some MEGA changes and it seems like we could use a few updates to the environment. Our guest this episode is Jessica Moss, a data architect and Microsoft MVP. She gets us up to speed on what we can expect in the new version and how this ties into the other changes Microsoft is making.
The show notes for today's show can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/jessica and we'll see you on the SQL trail.
What is the leadership of your company thinking about the future of data and the role you will play? To help give some insight into that question we have and executive pane on episode 54. Andrew Rose is the CEO of compare.com and Jim McCullen is the VP of IT for Century Distribution. We ask them about what they're looking for in IT staff, how they go about hiring, what they think of social media, and moving to the cloud. They give their thoughts on what makes a great member of the team and so I hope you will give today's episode a listen.
You can check out more about them and get the show notes for today's episodes at http://sqldatapartners.com/executive.
In Episode 53 Steve Stedman and I chat with THE Argenis Fernandez, storage guru and PASS Director-at-Large about what else? Storage. Steve and I learn something new from Argenis every time we talk to him and this time is no exception. We are talking LUNs, IOPs, and why he thinks we all need to approach storage a lot differently.
Check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/argenis
Since Microsoft purchases the R language they have been baking it into their products and SQL Server is on the list. SQL Server 2016 now has support for R and I know I have had people approach me about this and I thought it might be interesting to get Ginger Grant on the show and talk about the implications and what we poor database administrators need to do to get ready or at least be armed with questions when approached about the subject.
Are you using R? What is your experience like? Let us know on our show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/r
I am always amazed at how people can use technology to solve different problems and in today's episode, my friend Jana shares with us a problem he solved with PowerShell. The setup of this is different from previous episodes and I am interested to know if you like this format. While we do talk about some uses of PowerShell, the interesting part is how Jana learned PowerShell, got comfortable with it, and then used it to solve a difficult problem.
Steve and I also share some thoughts about when, if ever, you should shrink a database and the impact it can have on your system.
Show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/jana
As database administrators, we want to get as much performance as we can out of our SQL Servers. Microsoft has provided a few knobs for us to tweak in the Operating System, the local security policy, and in the engine itself and in episode 50 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we review some of these SQL Server settings and how you might take advantage of some and avoid others. Join me as I chat with Justin Randall about some of these settings and get introduced to my new co-host Steve Stedman!
Show notes for today are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/justin
When you code and you need to use a temporary object what do you use in SQL Server--temp tables or a table variable? There is plenty of conventional wisdom out there and my guest Wayne Sheffield and I talk about the differences between these two objects. Whether it around performance or coding standards, it seems everyone has an opinion about these objects.
Check out the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/06/21/sql-server-temp-tables/ and I will see you on the SQL Trail compañeros!
Over the last few years we have seen an explosion of new technologies and processes to manage data. Episode 48 asks the question--Is the Data Warehouse dead? I chat with MVP Tim Mitchell about the subject and how things are changing . . . and how they are staying the same.
The expansion of data sets and increased expectations of businesses for analysis and modeling of data has led developers to create a number of database products to meet those needs. As data professionals, it is incumbent upon us to understand how these tools work and put them to their best use--before somebody else puts them to sub-optimal use. I am joined by Kevin Feasel who walks us through some of the technologies available and sorts out under what circumstances we want to consider using each one.
Have you ever looked at some tsql code and thought--How does even run? I know I have and it can be daunting to take a piece of code and review it for performance or to make a change to it. I enlist the help of Jen McCown from the MidnightDBA team to discuss approaches to unraveling code. We tackle the issues of nested views, documentation, formatting, Hungarian Notation, and visualizing how all the code pieces fit together.
At the end of the day, we just want our code to be understandable and usable for the next person who has to review it, because that next person just might be you. :)
Get the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/05/31/unraveling-code/ and I'll see you on the SQL trail!
Compañeros, we are going to get back into the engine this episode and go back to a feature that has been available since 2005--Service Broker. I chat with Wolf about how he uses it, the major components, and scenarios that might work for you. Are you using service broker? Let us know on the website sqldatapartners.com/podcast
Episode 44 takes us into a new service in the Microsoft cloud--Azure SQL Data Warehouse. While still in preview, the Azure SQL Data Warehouse looks to help level the playing field for organizations that want to analyze their data without the expense of creating a data warehouse. Sound a bit counter intuitive? Check out this episode to find what the service is all about and what the future of data processing might look like.
Show notes for today's episode are at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/05/17/azuresqldatawarehouse/. Have fun on the SQL trail, compañeros!
Why is ETL so hard? All we want to do is move data from system A to system B. Perhaps that is the problem, says my guest Rafael Salas, and more time should be given to thinking about the architecture of the system. With our thoughts turned to SSIS, we discuss this idea in today's episode.
The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/05/10/etl/ and I'll see you on the SQL trail!
How did that get changed--do you ever get that question? In this episode I talk with Brad McKuhen about how you would answer that and how you might need more than just enabling the auditing feature in SQL Server. If you are willing to be a bit proactive and do some testing, you might be able to give an answer to that question instead of the same old shoulder shrug.
Check out the shownotes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/05/03/auditing/. See you on the SQL trail!
Compañeros, you know good care and feeding of your indexes is VITAL to a healthy database. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, I talk to Sean McCown about the best practices for index maintenance and how those guidelines are now part of his Minionware software.
The show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/04/26/indexmaintenance
In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast I chat with Jason Brimhall, about SQL Server compression and his experience with it. He also answers your compression questions: Why is it a bad idea to compress everything in your database and how does compression work?
You can check out the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/04/20/compression/. Have a good week and I'll see you on the SQL trail.
Today on the SQL Trail I talk with Richie Rump, the podcaster, blogger, and now new hire at Brent Ozar. He and I discuss measuring query performance, using SET STATISTICS, and the story behind his Statistics Parser application. He also talks about navigating the space between developer and DBA.
The show notes for today's episode are at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/04/02/statisticsparser/
Compañeros! You heard rumblings about how awesome SQL Server 2016 is, right? I talk with Rick Heiges about the wins he's seen for his clients using SQL Server 2016, including how one client's move from a large Oracle rack to SQL Server garnered them huge improvements in query performance.
Show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/04/02/sqlserver2016/
In this episode of the SQL Data Partners podcast I sit with Patrick LeBlanc during SQL Saturday RVA. We chat about Microsoft PowerBI. PowerBI is a business intelligence tool that easily connects disparate data sources to create dashboards and I was interested to get his thoughts on how this would affect the data professional. Patrick answers my questions about the application and also explains why he thinks that PowerBI has grown in popularity so quickly.
The shownotes for today's episode are found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/03/29/powerbi/
You can host SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines in a variety of configurations, ranging from a single database server to a multi-machine configuration. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast I chat with Luis Vargas, program manager for virtual machines, about why organization might consider a virtual machine with SQL Server already provisioned and other virtual machine considerations.
The show notes are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/03/23/virtualservers/
On Episode 35 of The SQL Data Partners Podcast, I talk with Philip Morgan of The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms. Philip’s book has influenced my work at SQL Data Partners, so I wanted to bring him on and share his insights with the rest of you on the SQL Trail. Philip and I talk about positioning as a tool to create more value through a narrowed focus. Philip discusses how to apply positioning to your SQL Career, even if you’re a W2 employee. Philip and I go over three ways to narrow your focus and how it affects the direction of your career. I also ask him about how to turn unwanted work assignments to your advantage using the leverage grained from positioning.
Get the shownotes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/03/14/positionyourself/ and I'll see you on the SQL trail.
Hello, compañeros!You’ve heard of Hekaton and in-memory tables before, but what does in memory really mean for your database? Perhaps you have questions like I did, like how does in memory OLTP differ from disk-based tables? What data types aren’t allowed in in-memory tables? Is in-memory only an “on premises” feature or does Hekaton work in Azure too? Is there a minimum amount of memory required for in-memory tables?
In Episode 34 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we’re going to talk about in-memory OLTP and in-memory tables with Jos De Bruijn. Jos is a Program Manager at Microsoft for SQL Server In-memory OLTP. We sit with Jos and we explore how in-memory tables work and why they’re just as durable as traditional disk-bound tables. He lays out the whole process. Jos also answers common DBA concerns about them and discusses how to make them efficient. Jos reveals the SQL Server 2016 features that affect in-memory OLTP.
As always, you can catch the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/03/08/inmemorytables/
Many developers will make the transition to the DBA role and in this episode I chat with Amy Herold about making that very move. Amy started as a C#/.NET developer and moved into the database world as an “accidental” DBA.
Amy shares her tips and stories from the trenches, including:
- The move from row-based thinking to set-based thinking
- How to manage developer access in production
- The database performance activities new DBAs need to master
- The importance of getting code reviews outside the developer team
- The tool Amy relies on as a DBA, and the one event you shouldn’t miss
- Why Amy believes that moving around frequently can be good for your career
You can get the links and show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/03/01/developer2dba/. Have fun on the SQL trail.
PowerShell, isn't that a Windows Administration tool? This is certainly how it is positioned by Microsoft, but why should the DBA community give it more than a passing glance? My guest is Mike Fal and we chat about ways data pros can use PowerShell.
Mike says there are two reasons why PowerShell is valuable for SQL Server folks. I hope you will join us for the conversation. We promise not to bore you with syntax.
Are you using PowerShell? I would love to hear your stories in the comments at the bottom of the show notes page at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/02/23/powershell/
As database administrators, we have to live with virtualization. As a consultant, I can't think of a single environment I have been in that didn't have some of the SQL Servers virtualized. Troubleshooting issues in a virtual environment can be a bit tricky and in today's episode I chat with David Klee about his experience and how you might learn from his experience.
What has been your experience with virtualization? I would love to hear from you in the comments on the show notes page http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/02/16/virtualization/.
Think of one big investment that will be made this year. How will it affect you? Perhaps there is a large server migration project or move to Azure on the books this year. Maybe you have been given the ok to try some new feature or have been promoted and have different responsibilities. You will make many decisions and purchase different things, but the biggest investment you should be involved in is the investment in yourself.
I am joined by Bruce Van Horn, host of the Life is a marathon podcast and the person that introduced me to the E to E ratio. The Entertainment to Education ratio is a gauge for how much of your time is spent entertaining yourself versus how much you education yourself. We discuss how this affects your future opportunities but also how it affects your happiness.
How do you keep yourself educated? I would love to hear about it. You can leave your comments and see the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/02/09/e2eratio/.
We each have our way of going about things–this is what makes us unique. When it comes to getting data out of the database, many times we might think that SQL Server would go about getting data the same way we would. If you think about scanning a Microsoft Excel document, how would you find the record you are looking for? How does that differ from SQL Server?
My guest for this episode is Brent Ozar and we chat about internals and how SQL Server processes your request and what you need to consider as SQL Server returns your result.
Our show notes for today's episode are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/02/03/sqlserverthinks/
Have you ever had a situation where performance got worse and you were sure why? Do you keep records of when changes happen to your system? How do we know there's a problem? Baselines can help us out. More often than not, tribal knowledge rules the day and if you weren't part of the tribe when the on-call pager goes off, things can be tough to figure out.
My guest this episode is Erin Stellato of SQLskills and we discuss what your baseline should consist of and how you might go about capturing some of that data. I am always interested to see how people monitor their servers and I know this episode will give you a few things to think about in your baselines.
Get the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/01/27/baselines and I'll see you on the SQL trail.
Have you ever wanted a feature to help you assess the impact of future SQL Server upgrades, the impact of hardware or operating system upgrades, and for SQL Server tuning? Well that tool has been around since 2012, but I have found that not many people have used Distributed Replay. The level of difficulty to get this feature set up lends to the small adoption rate, but I chat with Melody Zacharias about her experience with the tools and I think it is time to give this feature a spin.
You can see the show notes from today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/01/19/distributedreplay/. You can also let me know if you are you using Distribute Replay What do you think the best feature is? What is the worst thing about it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below the show notes. I look forward to hearing from you.
DevOps for the database--you have probably heard the term if you work in an organization that is deploying code on a regular basis. The developers have this down to a science, and now it is the database's turn. The idea of deploying code and having a certainty it will run correctly instead of crossing your fingers and hoping you don't see the red error messages has a certain appeal. There are lots of tools out there now to help with this, but it seems like we still drag our feet.
I know I did. When I chatted with Cindy Bean from DBMaestro, I didn't have much database change automation experience. I had exposure to source control, but DevOps seemed more than that. After speaking with Cindy I created my first database project in Visual Studio. I definitely get the idea and hope to implement it fully in my environment. This episode is an introduction to the idea of database change automation and how you might get started.
You can see the shownotes from today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/01/12/devops/
SQL Server 2016 has several new features and this episode explores the stretch database feature. One of the unique attributes of this feature is that it uses both the on premise instance and the Azure platform.
I chat with Anthony van Gemert, one of the product managers for stretch, about how the features works and under what scenarios organizations might use stretch technology.
Are you planning to use stretch database? Let me know via twitter. I am @CarlosLChacon. You can check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2016/01/06/episode-25/
One of the new features being added to SQL Server 2016 is the Query Store which will allow for greater access to the performance history of your databases. This is going to be extremely helpful when you are approached about 'What happened this morning?' With the Query Store feature, you will now be able to provide some insight into that question.
I chat with Borko Novakovic, the program manager for Query Store feature, and he shares with you, Compañeros, details about the new feature and how those interested in performance monitoring will be able to use this for their benefit.
Even if you aren't going to run SQL Server 2016 as soon as it comes out, you will find this information interesting and I hope it helps you along the SQL trail. Have fun out there.
You can find the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/12/29/query-store/
If I were a betting man, I would wager your disk IO system is probably the biggest bottleneck in your SQL Server right now. Sure, there are lots of moving pieces, but if you can tame the IO situation, you are putting yourself in the drivers seat. So how do you go about putting together the pieces you need identify your IO constraints?
I chat with Theresa Iserman, a premier support engineer at Microsoft about some of her thoughts and why IO in general is an issue. She gives us some guidelines and even some metrics to check out. Join us in the conversation, and I'll see you on the SQL trail . . .
As always you can check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/12/22/iotuning/
In what has to be one of the most downloaded SQL Server scripts on the planet with over 73,000 downloads, sp_whoisactive has been providing active session information to data professionals for eight years. I catch up with Adam Machanic to talk a bit about how the procedure came to be, how he uses it and what is in store down the road.
If you are using SQL Server and haven’t used sp_whoisactive before, I invite you go and download it right now, then come back and listen to the program. We will wait for you. Ready? Let's do this.
Have fun on the SQL trail compañeros.
You can see the show notes for today's episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/12/15/sp_whoisactive/
As one of the newest Azure offerings, Azure Data Factory can at first thought be compared to SSIS. I don't think we are quite there yet with the comparisons; however, I talk with MVP Reza Rad and discuss some of the similarities and differences between the two.
A consultant now living in New Zealand, Reza has lots of experience with the data management and gives us the scoop on the initial offering of this new Azure tool. I hope you enjoy the episode. If you have some feedback or comments, feel free to reach out on Twitter--I am @CarlosLChacon
You can see the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/12/08/azure-data-factory/
We all start somewhere and if you can find a mentor who will help you on your way by pointing you in a direction you had not considered, you are a lucky person indeed. This episode I chat some fellow podcasters about their experience with mentors and the characteristics we think good mentors have.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. -Oscar Wilde
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience. -Paulo Coelho
Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it. -Author Unknown
[A mentor and mentee] is the third most powerful relationship for influencing human behavior (after the family and couple relationships ) if it is working. -Richard E. Caruso, PhD
Part of the reason I have the podcast is to help bring to light some thoughts and ideas you may not have considered. I hope this continues with today's episode. I hope you check it out.
You can see the links to the other podcasts at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/12/01/role-of-mentors/
A hard drive is a hard drive, right? Storage has come a long way, but is probably still the biggest bottleneck in your system. Solid State Drives (ssd) have changed the rules in terms of performance and there is new technology on the horizon to allow us to access our data even faster.
I talk with Justin Strong and Ananda Sankaran from Micron Technologies about their experiences with SSD and how organizations are using in their environments. We also chat about some of the new technologies on the horizon for Micron.
Check out the shownotes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/25/ssd/ for links to topics discussed in today's episode.
I learn stuff every day. In this episode I tackle a new subject for me and one I am hearing a lot about--BIML. BIML is a markup language you can use to build your SSIS packages.
I met up with Bill Fellows and Cathrine Wilhelmsen in Portland and they shared with me some insights on BIML, what they use if for, and some tips on getting started. If you find your self doing more SSIS packages and haven't yet tackled BIML, this episode is for you!
Check out the shownotes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/17/biml/
Do you find you have tables and indexes that have grown really large? Are you moving around a lot more data than you used to? Are your windows for jobs and maintenance getting tighter? If you answered yes to any of these questions, partitioning may be for you!
Partitioning allows us to break a table or index down into smaller more manageable chunks. Partitioning can enable us to perform maintenance on just part of a table or index. We can even move data in and out of tables with quick and easy metadata only operations.
In this episode, we’ll go over basic partitioning concepts such as horizontal vs. vertical partitioning, how to identify if a table is ready for partitioning, and what you need to know about your applications before you implement partitioning.
Check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/10/partitioning/
I learn things every day. One of the great things about the SQL community is the willingness to share their learning experiences and today's episode is an example of this. I chat with Mark Wilkinson about the SQL Server Agent--some best practices and MSX--a feature I have not used in the past.
If you are interested in expanding your SQL Server agent horizon, this episode is for you. Check out the show notes for today's information at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/03/sql-server-agent
Corporate culture is a BIG deal when it comes to job satisfaction, and it is interesting to see how different sectors can be. Today we talk with Doug Purnell, DBA at Elon College in North Carolina and Jamie Wick, DBA at William and Mary in Virginia about their experiences working in the university system.
Check it out compañeros, and have fun on the SQL trail. As always, the shownotes are available at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/10/28/working-at-a-university/.
Clustering is a now tried and true technology to help increase the availability of your SQL Server environment. I talk with Paul Popovich about his experiences with clustering and how his approach has changed as the technology has evolved. If you are looking for a good introduction to some concepts of clustering, this episode is for you! It should be noted this episode does not include the new feature of Availability Groups.
You can view the show notes for this episode at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/10/03/clustering/
I attended Kevin Feasel's SQLSaturday session entitled Apply Yourself and thought it was pretty funny. While not close friends, I have know Kevin for a while and knew he had good stuff.
He there shared this quote in his session. “If you don't understand the APPLY operator, your skills are somewhere around the 50th percentile at best.” -- Adam Machanic.
I knew immediately I wanted to have him on the show.
This episode will introduce some concepts, but you will have to do a bit a leg work if you want to start 'Applying' this into your code--I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.
As always, you can check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/10/13/the-apply-operator/ for the show notes. Have fun on the SQL trail!
Database corruption is something that will eventually come to all data professionals. While I have been fortunate to only come across is a handful of times, I was glad that I was able to get back the corrupted data and get everyone back on track.
In May of 2015, Steve Stedman set the data community ablaze with his database corruption challenge. Some of the biggest names in the community jumped in with solutions to his challenge and I knew I wanted to have Steve on the show.
If you are interested in hearing more about his experience and his suggestions for dealing with database corruption, this episode is for you!
So it turns out an old dog can learn new tricks--or at least that is what happened to me when I chatted with Grant Fritchey from Red Gate software about SQL Server Statistics. Always taking an opportunity to teach, Grant talks about why statistics are important and we go over some fundamental items you may just want to know about. As always compañeros, have fun on the SQL trail.
Be sure to check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/09/29/statistics for information we chat about during the program.
We mix things up a bit as I chat with Thomas Frank from collegeinfogeek.com about test anxiety and test preparation. Taking a test can be a big deal and it is always interesting to get other options on preparation. As data professionals, of course we want a way to be able to advance our careers and a certification can play a role in that, but we might have a bit of anxiety around it. The biggest take away for me from this session was Thomas's tool recommendation and how he was able to start better habits. I took his advice and have seen some results I may share in a latter episode. Have fun on the SQL trail compañeros!
As always, you can check out links for the show on the website http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/09/23/episode-10-test-anxiety-and-test-preparation.
Joey D’Antoni has been doing quite a bit with database automation and I caught with him to discuss his experiences about how database automation has helped him be more efficient and have fewer support problems. We discuss strategies for starting your automation techniques and he gives a few pie in the sky examples if you are running a large environment. Compañeros, I hope you enjoy the program.
Be sure to check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/09/17/episode-09-database-automation
I chat will Louis Davidson about database design and get his thoughts on some strategies about how to go about making your design and what tools are available to help you. It may surprise you that, according to Louis, the data type is not the most important component of database design. I hope you enjoy the show.
Be sure to check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/09/08/episode-08-database-design/for the show notes.
I chat with Microsoft MVP Chris Bell about database security and some seemingly cavelier attitudes some organziations have about keeping data safe. We hit some of the methods SQL Server has to protect your data. Chris also unveils his security analzyer you can use in your environment to see what areas might need to be addressed.
You can check the full show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/09/01/episode-07-sql-server
Steve Jones, the editor from SQL Server central and I talk about the need to build your own brand and we share a few ideas on how to do that. We talk about Steve's brand and how he built that over time and some options available to allow you the most opportunities possible. This episode is a must have for those looking to kick it up a notch on the opportunity meter.
Be sure to check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/08/25/episode-06-build-your-personal-brand.
Robert Verell and I chat about good security practices and the principle of least privilege. We discuss Robert's rule to never give anyone db_owner, other groups and Robert's home grown group to give instead of db_owner.
Be sure to check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/08/19/principleofleastprivilege/ for the show notes.
We finish up our conversation with MVP Tim Radney on backup options with discussions on encryption and Azure. Tim also shares his favorite tools and his super hero power of choice.
Erik Véliz, the creator of SQL Server Booster is looking for folks to help with his lastest update. Check out sqlserverbooster.com for more info.
Also be sure to check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/08/11/episode04 for the shownotes and a chance to win Tim's book.
I chat with MVP Tim Radney about Backup and Recovery options in SQL Server. We chatted for quite awhile and I ended up making two episodes out of our conversation. This episode focuses on why we backup and some core ideas. Advanced features will be in episode 04. You can register to win a copy of Tim's book on Backup and Recovery by visiting sqldatapatners.com/podcast. Also be sure to check out the very cool offer from SQL Skills at the end of the session.
Be sure to check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/08/05/podcast-episode-03-backup-and-recovery/ for show notes
Today I am super happy to announce the launch of my podcast and I start with episode 00. In this episode I take some time to go through my journey in becoming a data professional and how I think the podcast will be of value to you. We talk about why I am making the podcast and what kind of person will find it useful. I also discuss how you I want to be your compañero on your journey as a data professional.
We discuss the following in today's episode.
SQL Cruise
ApexSQL Refactor
I was in Argentina for the SQLSaturday event in May of 2015 and made friends with Javier Villegas, a 20 year veteran in the DBA world. While extended events have been around for some time, many are still getting used to this new feature and I talk with Javier about how he uses extended events and how we might get started.
Be sure to check out http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/08/05/podcast-episode-02-extended-events/ for show notes and links to content discussed in this episode.