Bob Ward on SQL, Faith, and the Dallas Cowboys

In this episode, Frank and Andy talk with the legendary Bob Ward.

Links

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Notable Quotes

On playing the "plague or pollen" game. (02:30)

Regarding sportsball... (05:30)

Virtual is the new norm. (06:30)

Bob and Azure (07:30)

Frank caught Bob in person at Microsoft Ready (08:15)

On sharing code...(9:30)

Bob on SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters (11:00)

... and PolyBase (12:30)

"Keep the data where it lives, access it through the language you're familiar with." - Bob on PolyBase (13:48)

Regarding Synapse (14:48)

...even for AS/400... (18:20)

PolyBase as an incremental migration strategy... (19:30)

COBOL, and more COBOL, and Y2K (20:30)

"Buck Woody works with me..." - Bob Ward (21:00)

An aside about NFL Football teams and rivalries. (23:00)

We all miss baseball. (23:50)

"Did you find data or did data find you?" (25:00)

How Bob was recruited by Microsoft 26 years ago (26:45)

Anna Hoffman... (28:15)

Bob's Book: SQL Server 2019 Revealed (31:00)

"So this Bob Ward guy... he's kinda a big deal..." - Frank (32:45)

"I have people like my wife to keep me humble." - Bob (34:00)

"There's always somebody smarter..." - Bob (34:45)

"The Silverlight apocalypse..." (35:30)

"When I'm not working, I enjoy ____." (36:30)

Some Good News (37:30)

A Quiet Place (38:15)

"I think the coolest thing in technology today is ____." (38:45)

Bob started at Microsoft in 1993. (40:15)

"There's no way somebody is going to put a SQL Server in the cloud." (42:00)

FranksWorld.com (42:40)

On remote training (44:00)

"I look forward to the day when I can technology to ____." (45:30)

"IoT-ness" - Bob, circa 2020 (46:40)

"Share something different about myself." (48:00)

"We're all screwing up!" (49:30)

Grace is Greater, by Kyle Idleman (50:20)

Bob on LinkedIn (51:30)

aka.ms/bobwardms (51:45)

aka.ms/sqlworkshops (52:30)

Tom Clancy series (53:00)

Sherlock Holmes series (54:00)

Sherlock - BBC (54:45)

"John Krasinski is a great Jack Ryan." - Bob (58:00)

Transcript (AI Generated)

Hello and welcome to data driven,

the

podcast where we explore the emerging

field of data science. We bring the best minds

in data, software, engineering, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna

and Andy Leonard. Hello and welcome back to data driven.

The podcast or we explore the emerging fields of data

science,

machine learning and artificial intelligence.

If you like to think of data as the new

oil,

then you can consider as well like Car Talk and

with me on his epic road trip down.

The information superhighway is Andy Leonard.

Although. I think we are now currently in lock down

so that road ship and has been postponed.

It has and wow what a you know

what an interesting time to live in right Frank.

Right right, we are recording this on April 15th.

You know it's serious when even the government postpones tax

collection.

True, yeah today would have been the day that your

taxes were doing US,

but they pushed it back.

I forgot three months for

months whatever. Yeah, yeah, three months,

but it's in Julies coming up on my birthday.

That's how I remember it.

Like I need another paper.

They give it kind of.

Yeah exactly, but you know it's been an interesting day

here.

This I live in Virginia.

You know? This uh, FarmVille,

VA Ann. I imagine you may have gotten different weather

than I did,

even a little more odd for this time of year.

This late in spring. It is extremely odd to have,

uh, you know, an overnight temperature in the 30s.

Not only that, but we saw flurries this morning.

I believe this is the latest I've ever seen.

Snow flurries. Just crazy.

Well, you're at a higher elevation.

I think I know. Western Maryland had some snow overnight

too,

so.

It could be definitely could be,

yeah. It's hilly here where I am.

I'm a little little East of the

mountains. OK, but it is

allergy season so we're having just loads of fun here

with that.

How's things going with you Frank?

How's the family well? Well,

we're

doing good. We're all

sequestered together, and Fortunately I don't live in New York

City anymore.

In a small apartment. Otherwise,

I think I probably would've lost my mind by now.

Wow, yeah we my have allergies,

and I think my older son is developing allergies,

so we're playing the plague or pollen game.

And so terrible

game to play, isn't it?

Especially when you're outside.

It's like, although I found that wearing kind of like

face masks and stuff does help the sneezing and actually

in watery eyes.

So yeah,

actually does so.

Yeah, I I.

It's funny like I watch TV now and they show

old clips or something and

I'm like they're sitting too close together.

And that's the truth. I've seen it.

I've

kind of noticed that too.

So

enough about enough

about the stuff that's

going on with that. I have an announcement,

Frank.

What's your nationality? I am

so excited about this. My 17 year old son Stevie

Ray has been selected to present at SQL Saturday.

Richmond is going to be a virtual event at nearly

the last Saturday of April to 25th.

He came to me about a year ago.

He's been going to these things with me for over

half his life and he came to him 10 months

a year ago and says I want to do one

of these. I think I can do a presentation.

How do I go about it and I said,

well? You know, pick something shiny as a topic.

And he actually doubled up on that.

He is presenting on how to install SQL Server 2017.

On on Linux, running on a π three a Raspberry

Pi 3.

And I was like, you know,

you could have picked something harder

maybe. No, but he worked on this and it's been.

I would

estimate he's got 4 or 500 hours on it.

I helped him out as much as I could with

you.

Know like technical stuff, but I was mostly kind of

standing back just to see if he was going to

do this and he beat through it.

Frank and he got it to work nice and right

after that he put together.

I think so too and I'm so excited we're I'm

presenting in the first slot a week from Saturday.

He's presenting in a second right behind me and in

that same channel so.

I just I'm so proud of him.

You know these proud Papa moments,

right? You gotta eat.

These are totally, totally. I'll

never forget the day my.

He was nine at the time he went.

He was over to play date a friends house and

he fixed their router.

So yeah,

now so

proud that's awesome. Well, Speaking

of Speaking

of being Super Smart

and probably at a young

age to we are we are very honored today to

have.

I'm going to say the Bob Ward on the show

today as our guest.

Bob works for Microsoft. He doesn't awful lot of speaking

at the major major conferences is usually on the big

stage and in the big room.

And doing keynotes and stuff.

The only bad thing I think I can say about

Bob is I've seen him at the past summit a

few times wearing a Dallas Cowboys Jersey.

Goodness, gracious Bob. I don't know what

to say about that, but.

Will will let you select.

I'll confess, I'm a

Redskins fan an you know,

understand because I'll

admit it now. On

recording, you know at least you're not an Eagles fans.

I

can, you know, Redskins. Was this rivalry from years ago

in the 70s right now?

Not so much for us.

It's the Eagles pretty much so.

If you're an Eagles fan,

I might have to

drop off the call right now.

But it it please I if you do not know

who

Bob Ward is Gogo, checking out,

popping his name into you know into your favorite search

engine and check him out in my favorite search engine

actually is is Bing so I can say that,

but he's a lot of talks about data you do

a lot of free webinars.

You do a lot of speaking an you know you

do more than just talk about this.

I know you're engaged with the future of SQL Server.

And the data products I want to Azure and we're

just honored...