SQL Data Partners Podcast

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!