SQL Data Partners Podcast

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.

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.

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!

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!