I leave tonight for Australia. I was in London 3 days ago, so this will complete my halfway around the world trip when I time travel tomorrow and skip Tuesday. I’ll arrive in Sydney on Wednesday morning. I am very lucky and I appreciate the chance to go back down under for work. I have a few seminars I’d delivering with fellow Redgaters, MVPs, industry experts, and Octopus Deploy engineers. I’ll be busy these days: May 2- Brisbane May 7 – Sydney May 9 – Melbourne That’s next week, but I’m heading down early to recharge a bit. My wife is traveling with me to Sydney, where we’ll spend a few da ..read more

As I look at the state of information technology today, I see one constant: rapid change. We all see it. For instance, if you had said two years ago that you knew that generative AI would become a big deal in 2023, most folks would have looked at you like you were crazy. Yet here we are. And I know more, drastic change is still coming. Quantum computing is moving forward. When it gets here in full force, the way we secure the Internet will be obsolete. I’m not exaggerating. Dealing with change is hard. Understanding how to handle and attack change is crucial. While this is the type of post I w ..read more

I recently started full time learning of Amazon Web Services (AWS). I found that AWS's Relational Database Service (RDS) is really user-friendly.  RDS simplifies many of the complicated aspects of database setup, operation, and scaling. Now that I've gone through the process myself, I'm here to walk you through setting up your first AWS RDS instance.  Let's break it down into simple steps so you can get your cloud database up and running in no time.   What is RDS? AWS RDS (Relational Database Services) is a managed relational database service, where you can choose multiple data ..read more

Over the past couple of months, I have started losing my ability to talk without a mask. One of the effects of a disease, ALS, is that I am losing the ability to breathe without support which also impacts my ability to talk without my ventilator. This past weekend I did my first speaking engagement at Derby City Data Days in Louisville, KY. As the saying goes, “It takes a village.” As many of you know, I have been producing a video series called Fabric 5 which contains five minutes snippets about various Microsoft Fabric architectural topics. I was going to use some of that content to create ..read more

apolytus– n. the moment you realize you are changing as a person, finally outgrowing your old problems like a reptile shedding its skin, already able to twist back around and chuckle at this weirdly antiquated caricature of yourself that will soon come off completely. I don’t know if I am changing that much, though hopefully I’m still maturing a bit. More, I think about my daughter, who graduates college this year. She’s changed so much in the five years since she left home for college, outgrowing the problems and concerns she had as an 18-year old. I think I went through that myself, leaving ..read more

If you've ever wrestled with complex SQL code, you know the drill. Hours spent on a single query, eyes glazing over at the endless lines of commands, that sinking feeling when you realize there's a tiny error hidden somewhere in the mess. Sound familiar? There's got to be a better way, right? Enter SQL AI tools – your new database BFF. Imagine ditching the manual grind and letting an AI assistant handle the heavy lifting of writing and troubleshooting your SQL queries. Let's dive into how they work and why they could be a game-changer for anyone who works with data. The Top Frustrations with M ..read more

Today I was having a nice discussion with some colleagues about Fabric and pricing/licensing came up. I mentioned an F2 is only around €250 a month, but a colleague said “no no, it’s over €300”. A bit confused, I pulled up the sizing table of my Fabric capacity in Azure, which looks like this: Similarly, my colleague did the same for his capacity: Weird right? Turns out I created a capacity in the region North Europe, while they created a capacity in West Europe. That’s almost 14% discount, just by selecting a different region! On an F2 capacity this doesn’t seem to be much, but on higher c ..read more

As I’ve been working with SQL Saturday and managing changes to events, I’ve accumulated a lot of branches. Even though I’m a solo developer, I decided to use branches, as I expect others to share this load in the future. This post looks at how to start cleaning those up. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. You can see all posts on Git as well. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. Finding Old Branches When I ran the git br ..read more

Starting last week is a rollout of the public preview of a new and fully reimagined Microsoft Purview data governance solution. Data governance has become so much more important with the collection of more and more data. Data governance involves the processes, policies, and standards that ensure the effective use of information in an organization. It focuses on maintaining data quality, managing data life cycle, ensuring compliance with regulations, and defining roles and responsibilities for data management. This framework helps organizations achieve their goals by enhancing decision-making ..read more

Let's get one thing straight: database administration isn't the most glamorous tech job out there. You won't be building flashy user interfaces or trendy AI models. But if you like solving puzzles, ensuring systems run like clockwork, and directly affecting a company's success, then a career as a SQL database administrator (DBA) could be your calling. What is SQL Database Administrator? Think of a SQL DBA as the guardian of a company's data. They're responsible for everything related to databases: Installation and Setup: DBAs get the database software installed and configured correctl ..read more