My life changed twenty years ago, this very month.
I was a developer, working for a small software company outside of Boston. Our product was a warehouse management system, built with PowerBuilder on top of Oracle. We had a handful of large customers that helped keep the lights on, but a few went dark at the start of the year, casualties of the dot-com bust.
We were soon a casualty as well, forced to sell to a competitor at the start of the year. And despite their promises and assurances about not making changes, the layoffs started within the first few months.
They hit about a dozen folks that first day, including me. I was stunned.
I still remember the phone call from an executive I spoke infrequently with. "Can you come meet with me in the small conference room that is never used for anything?" Yeah, sure. I walked across the office, knowing what was coming.
I had been cut from a team before, but I was just not prepared for this. And no one could explain to me why I was chosen as opposed to someone else, there didn't seem to be any reason. It just...was.
And it really pissed me off.
I vowed to never allow myself to be in this situation again. I took a job that allowed me to grow. I became the DBA there, then jumped to a small startup as a sales engineer. From there I transitioned into technical advocacy, and I now serve as a Head Geek for SolarWinds.
If there is one piece of wisdom I could offer from the past twenty years it is this: Always be learning.
Don't rest with what you already know. Look for opportunities to grow. I've been doing that with my data science work these past few years. If I'm ever cut from the team again, I believe I'd be able to find work.
The same should be true for you, too.
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Community Links
The Azure Data Architecture Map
Wonderful visualization of the Azure Data Platform. The post has links to other maps, such as Azure Security and Azure Infrastructure Architect. Visualizations are a powerful way to share information, and these maps help show how various pieces of Azure are tied together.
Raw Data Podcast
Donald Farmer
My first memory of Donald is sitting on the floor at PASS Summit, giving an impromptu lesson on BI to a group of us thirsty to learn more about the tools he was building for Microsoft at the time. Donald is the closest thing we have to a Data Jedi. His BI wisdom is unmatched and he shares this knowledge as we cover his early interest in computers (and the power that they gave the user), the history of PowerPivot from one of the former “faces of Microsoft BI”, and so much more! Here’s Donald’s website, Treehive Strategy.
Events
We are moving forward with plans to host Live! 360 this November in Orlando.
Live! 360 brings the IT, Developer, and Data communities together for six days of training, knowledge sharing, and networking. With unlimited access to Live! 360’s five co-located events, you and your team will get the training you need to keep you and your business competitive and future-ready.
The call for speakers is open through May. As co-chair for SQL Server Live! I encourage everyone to submit a session to speak.
Send any questions about the event to me at SQLRockstar@thomaslarock.com
Data Janitor Roundup
AWS Glue now supports missing value imputation based on machine learning
When it comes to missing data, you have a handful of options. You can leave it missing, you can fill in default values, maybe use an average or a median. Or you could use some data science and make a prediction on the missing values. That's what Glue can do for you now.
DNS alias - Azure SQL Database
After being stuck in preview for what feels like forever, DNS alias is now generally available (GA). And the official documentation contains a favorite piece of technical writing: "The Internet relies on the DNS." Yes, yes it does.
Your applications can connect to an alias for the name of the server for Azure SQL Database. Meanwhile, you can change the SQL Database the alias points to anytime, to facilitate testing and so on.
Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Extended Events
This is great news but I will admit I'm surprised this was not already supported. The official documentation states it will support SQL 2012 and later (Enterprise and Standard only), and events are retained for a maximum of 7 days. You can read more about the limitations here.
Get the biggest bang for your buck with SQL Server on Azure VMs
Great summary of how to choose the right size VM, configure your storage, and leveraging caching to boost your performance and lower costs.
Detect outliers in AWS Glue DataBrew
The more I learn about DataBrew the more I like what I am seeing. Being able to easily visualize your data is important for exploratory data analysis. Instead of spending time writing Python code, just let DataBrew do the heavy work for you.
Thank you for reading!
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Send links to me on Twitter at @SQLRockstar or email me some data or feedback at SQLRockstar@thomaslarock.com
Love you, mean it.
Datahug
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