Fabric personas were originally designed to break down the various functional roles within Microsoft Fabric—such as Power BI, Data Factory, Data Activator, Data Engineering, Data Science, Data Warehouse, and Real-time Analytics—into more manageable, bite-sized sections. The goal was to prevent users from feeling overwhelmed by the platform’s breadth. However, this feature has since been discontinued, as it did not effectively communicate the seamless integration between these roles. Still, the u...
May 29, 2025•34 min•Season 8Ep. 285
Once you have your data stored in OneLake, you'll be ready to start transforming it to improve it's usability, accuracy, and efficiency. In this episode of the podcast, Belinda Allen takes us on a delightful journey through Data Flows, Power Query, Azure Data Factory (Pipelines), and discusses the merits of shortcuts. We also learn about a handy way to manually upload a table if you have some static data you need to update. There are many tools and techniques that can be used for data ingestion ...
Feb 04, 2025•59 min•Season 8Ep. 284
Microsoft Fabric offers two enterprise-scale, open-standard format workloads for data storage: Warehouse and Lakehouse. Which service should you choose? In this episode, we dive into the technical components of OneLake, along with some of the decisions you’ll be asked to make as you start to build out your data infrastructure. These are two good articles we mention in the podcast that could help inform your decision on the services to implement in your OneLake. Microsoft Fabric Decision Guide: C...
Jan 02, 2025•49 min•Season 8Ep. 283
In Episode 281, we introduced Microsoft OneLake with a high-level overview. Now we're going deeper with a discussion on the Parquet format, why Microsoft went with the Delta Lake variation, and what Delta Lake format brings to the table (no pun intended). We'll also examine some "behind the scenes" aspects of file management, and why you'll still be using the GUI to create most of your objects. Onelake is Microsoft's solution to the demand for centralizing all data in one location, eliminating t...
Nov 26, 2024•35 min•Season 8Ep. 282
As you start using Fabric, having a central location for your data is crucial. OneLake acts as this unified destination, offering a single, consolidated repository for all your data. In this podcast episode, we explore the core features of OneLake and its benefits with our guest, Mariano Kovo, and discuss how it efficiently handles large amounts of data from diverse sources. We'll also dive into the importance of how your data is presented to Azure services, focusing on the Delta Parquet format....
Oct 22, 2024•32 min•Season 8Ep. 281
At the Microsoft Build Conference in May 2023, Microsoft announced the new Fabric, where you could slice and dice all your data harmoniously within the environment. A few months later, Kevin, Eugene, and I discussed this evolution of the Azure Data platform in episode 267 , and our thoughts on the vision for it's future, our expectations, and predictions. Now, more than a year later, we decided it's a good time to take an in-depth look at the platform to see what goals have come to fruition, wha...
Oct 08, 2024•19 min•Season 8Ep. 280
If you use SQL Server, you will eventually have to migrate that instance somewhere – to a new version, a new server, the cloud . . . somewhere. Or perhaps you'll find yourself migrating from another database into SQL Server. No matter which way you slice it, SQL Server migrations can be daunting, not to mention complex and time-consuming. While we know there are risks and many things that can go wrong, the "new" Microsoft continues to put time and effort towards making successful SQL Server migr...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 7Ep. 279
Can you run SQL Server on Azure VM? Which VM is best? Is running SQL Server on a VM in Azure the right choice? Find out in this insightful episode with Anders Pedersen! With over 10 different SQL Server services now offered in Microsoft Azure, it can be difficult to know how you want to run your environment. Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways for an organization, and running SQL Server on a VM in Azure is the right fit. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we chat with Anders...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 7Ep. 278
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...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 7Ep. 277
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 sub...
May 21, 2024•42 min•Season 7Ep. 276
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 som...
Apr 16, 2024•45 min•Season 7Ep. 275
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 interesti...
Feb 22, 2024•51 min•Season 7Ep. 274
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 professi...
Feb 02, 2024•55 min•Season 7Ep. 273
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'...
Jan 10, 2024•50 min•Season 7Ep. 272
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 ou...
Dec 29, 2023•39 min•Season 7Ep. 271
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 laye...
Nov 21, 2023•39 min•Season 7Ep. 270
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 Man...
Oct 19, 2023•17 min•Season 7Ep. 269
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 ...
Sep 28, 2023•54 min•Season 7Ep. 268
All your data, all your teams—in one place. What am I? If you said Microsoft Fabric, you win! When I interned with Cisco Systems in 2000, I supported a platform called Unified Messaging. At that time, we were talking about getting your email, voice mail, and faxes all in one place. My, how the times have changed. To a certain extent, the Microsoft Fabric is an extension, or wrapper, of some of the tools we have talked about in other episodes. The central idea is the ability to store your informa...
Sep 12, 2023•44 min•Season 7Ep. 267
We're kicking off Season 7 with containers! Spinning up a VM may not be such a big deal anymore; however, most of us still have to request from another group one and wait. Even waiting on an Azure VM can be somewhat painful. Wouldn't it be nice to forget about setting up another development environment just to test something that isn't going to stick around? Our guest today is Chuck Bryan, and he talks to us about how he is using containers to support his environments and the flexibility it prov...
Aug 29, 2023•37 min•Season 7Ep. 266
Compañeros! In May, SQL Data Partners was acquired by Marathon Consulting . There were many moving parts to get this done and we are excited to finally bring this news to the podcast. In this episode we introduce the principles of Marathon Consulting, and we discuss the future of the podcast. Make sure your speakers are adjusted properly when you listen to this episode. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know via LinkedIn —we always look forward to hearing from you. The show no...
Jun 28, 2023•31 min•Season 6Ep. 265
A backup is only helpful when you can restore the backup. This should not prove to be overly shocking; however, normally we get the satisfaction of taking a backup and feel like all is well. Ideally, we should be testing our backups on some cadence—and it should be more frequent than the annual disaster recovery test. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast we talk with Chris Marshall, owner of Verified Backups, about how he has solved this problem and how it can benefit your organizati...
Apr 12, 2023•41 min•Season 6Ep. 264
When we couldn’t confirm a guest speaker by recording time, Eugene, Kevin, Amanda, and I decided the show must go on, so we went into the ideas vault and pulled out a couple of listener questions we hadn’t answered. In this episode, we talk about how to create your own documentation, SSMS installs, SOS_Scheduler_Yield and Eugene gives us an update on SQL Bits and the conference crud he picked up along the way. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.c...
Mar 29, 2023•42 min•Season 6Ep. 263
Learning new technology can be difficult—especially when it’s a technology in an area you are not familiar with. In this episode, Eugene walks us through some of the challenges he has faced getting started with Azure Synapse. We hope that this episode might be helpful to those trying to learn new features. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/15/episode-262-learning-azure-synapse-pt-1. Have fun on the SQL Trail!
Mar 15, 2023•32 min•Season 6Ep. 262
It would appear Microsoft has run out of words to use for new features/products, so they are just going to recycle existing words for a bit of fun at our expense. In this episode we explore the Azure Data Lakehouse—which is not a data lake, nor a traditional data warehouse and Books Online (BOL) refers to it as Databricks Lakehouse. Luke Moloney walks us through how combining the flexibility of data lake storage with some ACID transaction and data governance gives organizations looking to analyz...
Mar 01, 2023•51 min•Season 6Ep. 261
We’re back with another SQL Server 2022 feature—Contained Availability Groups. Have you ever failed over to a secondary node and then found a job or login missing? This new Enterprise-only feature aims to solve this problem by ‘containing’ all the objects—master, msdb, AND the availability database all in one group so you can manage everything you need when you have to fail over. Brandon Leach returns after more than 200 episodes to give us the lowdown on this new feature and walk us through whe...
Feb 15, 2023•36 min•Season 6Ep. 260
We kick off the new year discussing a new feature in SQL Server 2022 called Transact-SQL snapshot backups. Good luck with the Google search on this feature--we know we had fun. 😊 These are not the snapshot backups you were frustrated with in 2005. We talk a little bit about who will be interested in this feature and what scenarios it will come in handy. The hardware vendors seem particularly excited about this future as they can now introduce snapshots without needing a third-party application ...
Jan 17, 2023•28 min•Season 6Ep. 259
As we close out the year, we take a look back and think about all those SQL Server 2022 episodes we didn’t record this year—and then make the goal to increase this count in the new year. 😊 We discuss some of the Cardinality Estimation changes in this version and the scenarios in which this may affect other features. I ask Kevin and Eugene what technologies they will be focusing on in the year ahead and how many books Kevin is going to try and write. From all of us at SQL Data Partners, we wish ...
Dec 27, 2022•30 min•Season 6Ep. 258
Have you ever thought about working for yourself? It can be very enticing for some, and in this episode, we talk with John Sterrett about the pros and cons of running your own organization. We tackle some of the reasons you might get started and we share some of our experiences of working in our own organizations. Each person’s journey is going to be different and as hard as it will be, you need to ensure you don’t allow others success or failure to overly influence your decisions. As the work e...
Nov 30, 2022•40 min•Season 6Ep. 257
Seven years ago, I started the SQL Data Partners Podcast. We have now arrived at Episode 256, and we dedicate this episode to you, the community. Thanks to everyone who has joined us along the way, and we hope to continue providing content you can enjoy on the go while still connecting with your SQL Server community. While we originally thought we might focus on SQL Server 2022, we really found there are just lots of great topics to be covering in the future. We hope you enjoy this special commu...
Nov 03, 2022•57 min•Season 6Ep. 256
