Episode 258: Leave 2022 Enter 2023

No one wants to lose data when disaster strikes; however, we need to plan for some data loss and putting all the pieces in place can be tricky. There are two metrics commonly used to measure data loss and availability when it comes to planning for disasters—Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective. In this episode, we touch on how you might come up with these metrics, how to consider the implementation cost, and how you might go about walking through a disaster situation to test your plan.  The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/08/04/episode-230-rto-rpo. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

4 Aug 202141min

The scary part of upgrading SQL Server is finding out you have a problem AFTER the fact. In this episode, Mariano Kovo joins us to discuss the Data Migration Assistant tool from Microsoft. While the name can be a bit misleading, (What? Microsoft have confusing names—that's a first), the major benefit to the tool is the assessment feature to alert you of potential issues when you upgrade. Issues are broken into three major categories: Breaking Changes Behavior Changes Deprecated Changes While each change should be reviewed, many times we allow deprecated features to remain unresolved as they are still supported in SQL Server; however, we certainly want to put those on the backlog because one day Microsoft will finally pull the plug and we want to be ahead of the curve.  You can find the show notes and video for today's episode at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/07/21/episode-229-data-migration-assistant. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

21 Juli 202143min

As data practitioners, we want to get ahead of any problems that might come up and share those insights with others on our team. In this episode, Edward Pollack gives us a few scenarios we might consider as we attempt to prevent application issues. These techniques also go into the security space and could help prevent data loss. As we collect this information and make it available to others, we can also demonstrate the ROI we provide to the organization. You can find the show notes and video for this episode at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/07/14/episode-228-predicting-application-problems-with-database-metrics. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

14 Juli 20211h 7min

Organizations look to constantly improve and offer better services and the application tooling has been built to accommodate the process. Database tooling has been a bit slower to develop; however, in this episode Eitan Blumin, a co-host at sqlserverradio.com, brings us up to speed on the latest features of SQL Server Data Tools with some thoughts on how to get started with continual deployment or ‘devops’.  We know this can feel like a steep learning curve for folks without a programming background and we share a few resources for you to get started. The show notes and video can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/06/23/episode-227-ssdt-methodologies-for-db-devops/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

23 Juni 20211h 9min

Let’s say you have completed a lift and shift VM hosting to the cloud.  Great—you now use Iaas services.  While you don’t have to worry about the hardware, managing the software can be problematic.  The SQL Server IaaS Agent Extension can offer some PaaS-like services and make it easier to manage the database environment.  In this episode we chat with Ameena Lalani from Microsoft about this feature, why you might want to enable it, the prerequisites, and the downsides.  She also shares her daily guilty pleasure and Kevin lets it be known he doesn’t put toppings on his ice cream anymore. The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/06/09/episode-226-sql-server-iaas-agent-extension/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

9 Juni 202158min

Have you ever created a report in a visualization tool, spent all this time and energy creating something that looked really cool, went through more edits than you could remember only to deliver the report and have the recipient go “What am I looking at?” I don’t think I am the only one and, in this episode, we explore some of the rookie mistakes IT pros make when creating visualizations. The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/05/26/episode-225-dashboard-design-principles. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

26 Maj 202156min

Carlos, Kevin, and Eugene reconnect after some time away with a new streaming time.  Long form conversation on a single topic is also the place we want to get back to in our podcast.  The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/04/28/episode-224-the-standup-meeting/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

28 Apr 202124min

With both Kevin and Eugene busy this week, Carlos went solo to share a few changes to the podcast, including the Twitch livestream moving to Tuesday, how you can support the podcast, and podcast episodes going back to being published every other Wednesday. If you have a subject that you’d like to chat about on the podcast with us, we’d love to schedule a time with you…go to sqldatapartners.com/podcast to sign up. We invite you to submit to our Call for Speakers for SQL Trail June 2021, starting April 15th, and whether you speak or not, to attend SQL Trail on June 15th. Carlos also discusses how you can join the SQL Data Partners team as an independent contractor. The show notes for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2021/04/14/episode-223-podcast-update. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

14 Apr 20219min