It's that time of year again – the air is cold and that means it's once again time for PASS Summit. It really doesn't feel like a year has passed! While the pandemic once again means that the summit will be virtual, I'm still looking forward to the opportunities to present and (virtually) meet up with old friends and …

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For the past few years I have had an ongoing project to preserve all my family's old home movies. This has involved a deep dive into understanding videotapes, VCRs, and video capture technologies that I never thought I would do, but I feel it's necessary to get the highest quality copies of everything I can before …

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I was extremely fortunate to be able to present about data compression at the EightKB SQL Server internals conference last week. If you missed my talk in person, you can now view it, as well as the entire day, on YouTube! I was able to answer many questions during the session, but there were a few still left after time …

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SQL Server Big Data Clusters (BDCs) are a highly anticipated feature of SQL Server 2019, but what are they – and how can their capabilities best be leveraged? Let's dig a little deeper and find out. When SQL Server 2017 added support for Linux, the groundwork was laid for integrating SQL Server with Spark, HDFS, and …

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I'm very proud to announce that I am now a Microsoft Certified Trainer for 2020-2021! I have benefitted greatly from skilled trainers throughout my career, and am really excited to now be an official member of this group! I'm really looking forward to being a part of the MCT community, and have some big plans for the …

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I am extremely honored to be speaking at a new online conference – the very first Data Community Weekender Europe! Data Community Weekender Europe was created to address the need for an online data platform conference since so many in-person events around the world have been cancelled as of late. It's taking place on …

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I have long been the digital archivist of my family, putting countless hours into tracing genealogy, scanning and organizing photos, and, recently, digitizing old videos. For the past few years, my labor of love has been converting VHS, Betamax, and 8mm camcorder tapes to digital formats so they can be preserved. It's …

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I'm always honored to be chosen to present at events, but I'm especially happy to be speaking at the first ever Data Platform Discovery Day! Data Platform Discovery Day is "A free one-day virtual conference introducing you to the Microsoft Data Platform", and it's new this year. It's actually 2 days, …

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When migrating databases to the cloud, requirements can differ between organizations and often between applications as well. One deployment option does not fit all. With Azure, you have two choices: SQL virtual machines or a fully managed SQL database service. Understanding the differences between the two is the first …

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For those wanting to experiment with Azure Cosmos DB for free, a great option has long been the Azure Cosmos DB 30 Day Trial, which is awesome because you can keep renewing it in perpetuity. But now there's something even better – an entire free tier! That's right! Microsoft has just announced Azure Cosmos DB Free …

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