Data engineering, developer advocacy, and technical leadership insights
Showing Up This past weekend I graduated from Georgia Tech with a Master’s in Analytics. That’s not a sentence I would have expected to write thirty years ago. Back then, I found myself on the Georgia Tech campus, sitting across from a professor who, in a polite and professional way, told me I was not good enough to attend. The rejection was deflating but not devastating. I knew my undergraduate…
Every March, data scientists and sports fans collide on Kaggle. This year, I came out ahead of 3,464 of them. 21st place out of 3,485 entries. Top 1%. I'll take it. This is how I did it. Why Am I Even Doing This? I have an MS in Mathematics, way before some hipster decided to rename "statistics" as "data science". I spent the better part of a decade as a database administrator before deciding I…
At Microsoft Build in 2023 the world first heard about a new offering from Microsoft called Microsoft Fabric. Reactions to the announcement ranged from “meh” to “what is this?” To be fair, this is the typical reaction most people have when you talk data with them. Many of us had no idea what to make of Fabric. To me, it seemed as if Microsoft were doing a rebranding of sorts. They changed the name…
Imagine you conceive an idea which will save your company millions of dollars, reduce workplace injuries, and increase sales. Now imagine company executives dislike the idea because it seems difficult to implement, and the implementation details are not well understood. Despite the stated benefits of saving money, reducing injuries, and increasing sales your idea hits a brick wall and falls flat.…
The most popular feature in any application is an easy-to-find button saying "Export to CSV." If this button is not visibly available, a simple right-click of your mouse should present such an option. You really should not be forced to spend any additional time on this Earth looking for a way to export your data to a CSV file. Well, in Azure ML Studio, exporting to a CSV file should be simple, but…
This is one of those posts you write as a note to "future you", when you'll forget something, do a search, and find your own post. Recently I was working inside of Azure ML Studio and wanted to browse the sample datasets provided. Except I could not find them. I *knew* they existed, having used them previously, but could not remember if that was in the original ML Studio (classic) or not. After…
I am happy, honored, and humbled to receive the Microsoft Data Platform MVP award for the fifteenth (15th) straight year. Receiving the MVP award during my unforced sabbatical this summer was a bright spot, no question. It reinforced the belief I have in myself - my contributions have value. Microsoft puts this front and center on the award by stating (emphasis mine): "We recognize and value your…
After many months of editing, revising, and writing, my new book Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics: A Practical Guide to Analyzing Performance in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database is ready for print! You can pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3fQr7hz I thoroughly enjoyed this project, and I want to thank Apress and Jonathan Gennick for giving me the opportunity to update the previous edition. It…
A common software development practice is to take data from a production system and restore it to a different environment, often called "test", "development", "staging", or even "QA". This allows for support teams to troubleshoot issues without making changes to the true production environment. It also allows for development teams to build new versions and features of existing products in a…
No Satya, thank you. And you're welcome. Let's do lunch next time I'm in town. This past week I received another care package from Satya Nadella. Inside was my Microsoft Data Platform MVP award for 2021-2022. I am happy, honored, and humbled to receive the Microsoft Data Platform MVP award for the thirteenth straight year. I still recall my first MVP award and how it got caught in the company spam…