SQL Data Partners Podcast

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!