The Bit Bucket

The latest online on-demand course that I’ve been working on is now out the door. SQL Server Locking, Blocking, and Deadlocks for Developers and DBAs is available at our site: SQL Server Locking, Blocking and Deadlocks for Developers and DBAs (sqldownunder.com)

It’s designed to let you learn to find and fix locking issues, and to avoid them in the first place.

To celebrate the release, use coupon code LOCKINGRELEASE until January 20th to get 25% off the price.

2023-12-31

I had the great pleasure to record a Fabric Down Under podcast with Microsoft MVP Reid Havens the other day.

Reid is the founder of Havens Consulting Inc. and a Microsoft MVP, and a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience in technology, organizational management, and business analytics. Reid teaches Business Intelligence, reporting, and data visualization, and that’s what I wanted to talk to him about.

Reid is the founder of Havens Consulting Inc. and a Microsoft MVP. Reid is  a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience in technology, organizational management, and business analytics. Reid has a Master’s Degree in Organizational Development and a background in consulting for Fortune 10, 50, and 500 companies.

2023-12-19

I had the great pleasure to get to also record another new Cosmos Down Under podcast last night. It’s now edited and released.

Show 9 features Microsoft MVP Hugo Barona discussing his experiences in migrating clients to Azure Cosmos DB, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

I hope you enjoy it.

You’ll find it here, along with previous episodes: https://cosmosdownunder.com

2023-11-12

I know it’s been a while, but there’s a new SQL Down Under show published!

While I’ve been busy with https://cosmosdownunder.com and https://fabricdownunder.com , I haven’t forgotten the SQL Down Under shows. It’s time for some more SQL Server love.

I had the great pleasure yesterday to record a podcast with one of my UK based friends Rob Sewell. Rob’s one of the rare breed that is both a Data Platform MVP and an Azure MVP.

2023-11-11

One of the conferences that I enjoy speaking at each year is the Data Science Summit that comes out of Warsaw.

Once again, the speaker lineup looks excellent, and there are early bird discounts available now. I’m always amazed at how low cost these Eastern European conferences are.

https://dssconf.pl/user.html?lang=en#!/login

2023-11-02

I had the great pleasure to get to spend time today, talking with Will Thompson. We were discussing Data Activator in Microsoft Fabric. Data Activator has just entered public preview.

Will is a Program Manager at Microsoft, where he’s working as part of the Microsoft Fabric team. During the show, Will discusses the two typical use cases for Data Activator: one that’s about taking action on standard analytics, and one that’s about working with streaming data.

2023-10-13

In a previous post, I wrote about how to create a hash of all the columns in a table, by using FOR JSON PATH and HASHBYTES. This is incredibly useful if you need to check if incoming data is different to existing table data.

The code that I suggested (based on WideWorldImporters) was as follows:

SELECT po.PurchaseOrderID,
       HASHBYTES('SHA2_256', pod.PurchaseOrderData) AS HashedData
FROM Purchasing.PurchaseOrders AS po
CROSS APPLY
(
    SELECT po.*
    FOR JSON PATH, ROOT('Purchase Order'), INCLUDE_NULL_VALUES
) AS pod(PurchaseOrderData);

The challenge with that code though, is that for the existing table data, it’s best calculated when the data is stored, rather than every time it’s queried. And, bonus points if you then create an index that holds just the key for matching plus an included column for the HashedData. With a bit of careful work, you can get an efficient join happening to find differences.

2023-10-09

I want to call attention to an upcoming change that I’m surprised I haven’t heard a lot more comments about. When you deploy an Azure VM, by default, they’ve always had the ability to connect outbound to the Internet.

That’s going to change.

Note the contents of this official notice: Default outbound access for VMs in Azure will be retired— transition to a new method of internet access.

The TLDR version of this, is that after the change date, when you deploy an Azure VM, it will not have outbound connectivity to the Internet.

2023-10-04

I took AI-102 yesterday. It was the first exam that I’ve taken where Learn content was available. There’s an icon at the bottom centre of the screen, beside the one that lets you take a break. (I haven’t used that break option yet but that was also a great recent additon).

Did it help?

There were a couple of places where I found it helped. It’s not going to teach you the content, even though the training parts of Learn are available. That would mostly take far too long. What it worked well for, was to confirm the purpose of a specific option, etc.

2023-09-30

I was recently sent a copy of a new book by Ahilan Ponnusamy and Andreas Spanner, called Technology Operating Models for Cloud and Edge: Create your purpose-built distributed operating model for public, hybrid, multicloud, and edge.

It was interesting to read this book.

I spend more of my time on the Azure side of the fence than the AWS / RedHat side of things, so I have some pretty different opinions to the authors on many of the topics. I’ve have worked with multiple clouds, so what they were describing was familiar anyway.

2023-09-28