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#SQLSat605: SQL Saturday Rheinland #sqlsatrheinland

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Last week SQL Saturday Rheinland took place at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. While PASS officially moved from a SQL Server only focus to integrate other vendors products as well, to me it’s the “all you want to know about SQL Server and the Microsoft Data Plattform” event of choice.

Review the official agenda on the events home page at SQL Pass: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/605/Sessions/Schedule.aspx.

Below you can find the session of my choice.

If you wonder why I did not choose to many sessions from the cloud track 3, please keep in mind that next to all that Azure cloud topics you still need to have enough knowledge about basic technical details on your solution. Data processing is a core topic of my choice.

I also tried to join the “Real-world Hybrid solutions with Microsoft SQL Server and Azure” by Scott Klein, but unfortunately this session got canceled and they will try to provide a remote session. As I’m working a lot on Azure I was heavily suprised that  the computer science department student representatives were unable to deliver internet access to Scott. I think, this will be all all grist to his mill for those who still did not stop to fight against cloud data plattform solutions. I understood the heavy impact to my own customers when discussing about moving to the cloud. So while Scott hated to cancel his session, there was a lot to learn from that to me about how to design data solutions.

Sessions of my choice

I was most interested in cloud related topics, so I went to these sessions

  • ETL in the cloud by Alexander Klein
    Early in the morning Alexander presented a heavy topic about ETL and possibilities that the cloud offers you to do that using logic apps, Azure functions, Azure data lake and many other ways on how to do your ETL.
  • Let’s have some fun(ctional) with M (Power Query/Power BI) language! by Cèdric Charlier
    Cèdric took us on a funny  tour across M, some basics of functional programming and some how to get your task done basics in M.
  • Azure Automation – Deployment, Backup und Skalierung von SQL Servern by Björn Peters
    All your journey to the Azure data plattform starts with installation and/or deployment of your SQL database solution. Björn demonstrated some possibilities on how to deploy your solutin by using ARM templates, PowerShell and/or DSC, depending on your solution of choice.
  • Was ist für mich als Datenbankentwickler neu in Visual Studio 2017? by Frank Geisler
    Frank took us with him on his tour across the new Features of VS2017 and database development using SSDT, the redgate toolbox and some other tools. This session got enriched by some additional notes from his side about stability and usability of VS2017 tools and features agains those available in VS2015.
  • SQL Server and Docker. What, How and Why by Andre Kamman
    Andre provided a very entertaining tour on Docker containers on Windows, some basics and how to switch between Windows and Linux Containers; he added some important notes when working with SQL server in your container. Last but not least he toured through a simple Dockerfile to install SQL server more customizable on your containers.
    Ah, and yes, he mentioned  will happen in the Netherlands.
  • Query Store beim SQL Server 2016 – Licht und Schatten by Michael Saß
    Michael made a quick tour to compare Query Store with the classic DMVs and addressed some do’s and don’t, limits and possibilities about that feature.

Take-aways and resume

SQL Saturday Rheinland – why didn’t I know that you exist before March 2017? This is an event go get in contact with all kind of data platform specialists from Nothern Europa. I’m sure that I will look out for more sessions like SQL Saturday, and as a little take-away from the docker session, especially for the SQL Saturday 666 event to see what it means to have the number of the SQL beast.

The data platform is so big, and my current knowledge and practice about it is so small…