The Friday before I left for PASS Summit, I was shocked and surprised to find out that I had been presented the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for Data Platform. My shock was genuine, as this was just about the last thing I was expecting. And then the congratulations and other kind words started …

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My live coverage of the keynote on day 2 of PASS Summit 2019!

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My live coverage of the keynote on day 1 of PASS Summit 2019!

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I don't know where the last year went, but it's once again time for PASS Summit. It really doesn't feel like a year has passed! This will be my eighth PASS Summit as an attendee and my seventh as a speaker. I know I'm extremely fortunate to have been able to attend and present so many times, and am looking to the …

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This year Microsoft is conducting focus groups at PASS Summit. Attendees will be able to meet with members of various product teams and either provide feedback on existing features or learn the roadmap for where different facets of a product are headed. Focus groups will be taking place throughout the day on Wednesday, …

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Often when I am troubleshooting SQL Server or Azure SQL Database performance issues which I believe to be related to concurrency, I get curious about what isolation level is being used. But how does one find out the isolation level a query is executing with? There are actually several locations that may need to be …

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I'm always happy when I have the opportunity to present a session for an audience, but I am especially excited about delivering a session for GroupBy next week! GroupBy is a free online training event that has been going on for about three years. I've always thought it was a great concept, but it hasn't been until now …

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Last year I wrote about how to upload data to Azure Blob Storage Archive Tier, and included a PowerShell script to do so. It's something I use regularly, as I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos and videos safely (and cheaply!) stored in Azure Blob Storage using Archive Tier. Things Just Got Easier! Microsoft recently …

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With PASS Summit 2019 quickly approaching, PASS is organizing a sneak peek at some of the sessions presented at Summit in a 24 Hours of PASS event coming up on September 10-11. I'm very happy to be delivering a brand new session entitled Dipping Your Toes In: Azure Data Lake for DBAs. If you've worked with data or have …

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I was working on a slide deck and did something I don't normally do – I added a photo. Usually the graphical content of my presentations involves diagrams or other vector art – I don't often have the need for actual photos. But this time I did, and I was really surprised to see that PowerPoint generated a text …

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