SQL Data Partners Podcast

Why do some features get all the fun?  I would like to be a fly on the wall at some of the Microsoft feature development meetings. There are many very cool features that didn't get quite enough love to get the adoption they deserve.  In this episode we are talking about Resource Governor and before you roll your eyes, you may be interested to know some of the side benefits of using the feature.  W...

Based on listener feedback we got from episode 72, a request was made to have a conversation about testing frameworks and in this episode we are going to focus on tSQLt.  We are pleased to have Sebastian Meine, the creator of the tSQLt unit testing framework, on the podcast with us.  We talk about the basic principles of tSQLt Framework when it comes to unit testing. Sebastian will also be discuss...

Have you done your migration to SQL Server 2016 yet? Don't worry—you aren't alone. With all the glory of new features and improved performance, not all upgrades are equal. In this episode we talk with Javier Villegas who returns from episode 2 to talk about some of the issues he ran into on the upgrade to 2016. He stumbled on a process that normally runs for 7 minutes prior to the upgrade and then...

The Microsoft Most Valued Professional or MVP award--while it's hard work and dedication to be called an MVP, what are the benefits? Well, Kathi Kellenberger is a great member of the SQL community, traveling to many SQL Saturdays, speaking at conferences about SQL server, and this time she is here with us to tell us what it really means to be an MVP and the great journey it has been to becomi...

We've all been there – you have some data and you need to make it pretty for the report. With the all the new reporting options you have probably been tempted to find a new way to visually present information.  In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about data visualizations and our guest, Jonathan Stewart, has some issues with the way we currently go about it.  Jonathan has been on the sh...

In the previous episode we discussed the basics of using indexes, what they are, how to use them, along with some common problems and solutions. One of the problems you will certainly face as time passes is index fragmentation. While indexes will certainly help your database perform well, they do require care and feeding--meaning there is some administrative overhead. In this episode, we continue...

Part of what we like to do on podcast is to present topics and discuss different ways you might use features. In this episode, we go back to basics and discuss indexes. Like most topics, we made sure to explain all the important aspects. Because this is a such broad topic, we decided to carry this over into our next episode as well. Using the phone book as an example, we chat with our gu...

When was the last time you deployed code and then found an issue with the version of a stored procedure, a setting, or even a service pack?  While we data folk don't generally have as much trouble with environment issues are our developer counterparts, it can still be a big deal.  Spinning up a VM may not be such a big deal anymore; however, most of us still have to request one and wait.  What if...

Although the SSIS Catalog DB is created with management studio, it does not behave like other databases.  Our conversation in this episode revolves around the catalog, SSIS packages, and some of the complexities of migrating packages.  Steve and I are excited to  chat with our guest Andy Leonard about his thoughts on the catalog and how this feature provides some...

As database administrators, we will all upgrade our environments at some point; however, we don't normally have the opportunity to upgrade to the next version of SQL Server before it becomes available to everyone else.  In this weeks episode of the podcast, Steve and I chat with Brian Carrig about the journey channeladvisor took to implement SQL Server 2016 in their environment, that it was like w...

We invited Paul Turley on the show to chat with us about some of the new features in SQL Server reporting services, but were pleasantly surprised to have the conversation take a different direction.  Paul talks about some of the new training available for those interested in visualizations and why this community can be hard to define--and connect with.  There are so many visualization options and...

Availability groups provide some exciting features in mixing high availability and disaster recovery; however, from a performance consideration, there are a few drawbacks.  With the advances in SQL Server 2016, our guest Jimmy May from SanDisk, set out to test the features and see if they could get some really high performance out of an availability group with two synchronous replicas. In this epi...

Storage testing and validation is something what we to add under roles and responsibilities as DBAs. Every database we ever manage is going to need one, but how often do we kick the tires? Many times we're basically told to go verify that array or we're doing this POC, we're testing this new storage, but are we really only testing connectivity?  In this episode of the podcast, we chat with Argenis...

As the year 2016 comes to a close, Steve and I share our thoughts on our accomplishments for the year and what lies in store for 2017.

At some point all data administrators will have to tune their environments and there are may ways you might go about that.  In this episode, we talk with Pinal Dave about how he does performance tuning and the thought process behind the approach.

In the data space we're hearing a lot about dev ops, continuous integration and the programmers are getting a lot of love there with lots of tools to help them; however, if you're on the data side--not so much.  If you're running Agile in your environment and then you're trying to do data warehousing or other data development we're not quite getting the same love. Sure, there are a couple of unit ...

It is easy to feel like the odd man (or gal) out in the SQL Community.  We are constantly hearing about new features, products, and architectures and our companies may not always have the same enthusiasm when we describe what could be. This is probably even more true in the Analytics space as much of the marketing has been pointed in that direction.  Even PASS tried to create a conference just for...

In the keynote of PASS summit 2016 Rohan Kumar, the program manager for SQL Server proudly displayed a database restore to a SQL Server instance installed on Linux.  What makes this all even more interesting is the database was sourced from a Windows server.  While it might not sound like much, the number of operating systems SQL Server runs on has now doubled.  This is no small feat and our guest...

We have all been there–next, next, next–let's just get this install done.  While there are many ways to get SQL Server installed on a server, the real impact is in the way we administer the database and when we want to get good performance.  Listener James Youkhanis asked us about our install checklist and Steve and I realized we hadn't made one public before.  In this episode of the SQL Data Part...

For all of us working with data, we know that we work no only with SQL Server but the suite of tools around the SQL Server engine.  In this episode, we share some thoughts around SSIS administration, which is the most popular ETL tool in the Microsoft stack.  Just like the SQL Server engine, many times the defaults are taken and in this episode we give some thoughts around logging, package executi...

Compañeros! The good organizers SQLSaturday in Pittsburgh allowed me to take a slot on the schedule and opened up the podcast for a little Q&A session and I was super happy with the results.  We had several SQL Server pros come and our conversation was around one central issue--testing in your development environment.  We came at from a setup perspective, but also from a how to compare apples and...

After talking with Patrick Thomas in episode 64 , I was introduced to Microsoft's newest learning curriculum, the Microsoft academy, and their first offering in data science.  In this episode, I talk with one of the lead course writers Graeme Malcolm about the new program.  Microsoft consulted data scientists along with several companies to identify the core skills they need to be successful. A cu...

This week on the SQL Trail, Steve and I chat with Jason Horner about building a good data architecture. When talking about a data warehouse architecture, or even just a data architecture, people often think about building the data warehouse and specifying the server hardware, building the ETL, things like that--they tend to lose sight of the larger picture of data architecture.  Jason gives us his...

Have you ever thought that Microsoft certifications were a waste of time? Depending on where you are on the experience scale, certifications still play a large role in hiring and career development.  In Episode 64 of the SQL Data Partners Podcast I talk to Patrick Thomas the program manager for the MCT and MCP programs and the role they play at Microsoft and in what way they continue to provide va...

Availability groups provide both high availability features and disaster recovery options, but they also have several areas you must be aware so you don't introduce more risk into your environment.  The major advantage is availability groups allow for you to fail over more than one database at a time.  In Episode 59 we talked about general data availability options and in this episode we focus on ...