Not too long ago, I mentioned that compute instances in Azure Machine Learning are lacking one critical thing: auto-stop functionality. The single biggest problem I have with compute instances is that there is no auto-stop functionality to them. This is really frustrating because you’re paying for that virtual machine like you would any other, so…
Getting the SQL Server Product Key via Powershell
I was working on an upgrade recently, trying to move from SQL Server 2016 to SQL Server 2019. I wanted to perform an upgrade in-place on an Azure VM, but needed to get the product key. There are a few places where you can find Powershell functions to get this product key, with Ryan @…
New Training: the Curated Data Platform (Free for a Limited Time)
I am pleased to announce a new course: The Curated Data Platform. Given two hours of footage, you'd think I would find a spot where I smiled. A Brief Summary The Curated Data Platform is a 2-hour video training aimed at providing you a 30,000 foot overview of the data platform space. In this course,…
Upcoming Events: Data Platform Summit 2020
I've talked about Data Platform Summit before, but now that we're close to go time, I wanted to mention it again. This year, I will be presenting one breakout session and one training class. The breakout session is entitled Optimizing Backup Performance using Data Science Techniques. In it, I walk through the configuration settings we…
The Non-Technical Life Tip for Getting More Things Done
T-SQL Tuesday This month's T-SQL Tuesday topic comes from Kenneth Fisher. T-SQL Tuesday 127 How about for this months TSQL Tuesday let’s do another month of tips and tricks. But just to be a bit different, nothing to do with SQL Server (in fact let’s say nothing related to a DBMS). No SSMS tricks, no…
Installing TensorFlow and Keras for R on SQL Server 2019 ML Services
I make fairly heavy use of SQL Server Machine Learning Services in my work environment, and this includes using TensorFlow and Keras (in R and Python) to train neural networks and generate predictions against them. With the upgrade to SQL Server 2019, the security model around Machine Learning Services has changed, restricting what you are…
2019 Year In Review, Part 1
This will be a review of my presentation goals for 2019. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about a bunch of other stuff I did. It's been a busy year. Coming into the year, I had 5 major goals and 2 stretch goals. Here's how I did on each of them. Speak at 20 SQL Saturdays…
Forensic Accounting: Basic Analysis
This is part three in a series on applying forensic accounting techniques to SQL and R. Getting Exploratory The term "basic analysis" is pretty broad, so we're going to cover a few concepts today. Most of this is in the realm of Exploratory Data Analysis, looking at the data to gain a better understanding of…
SQL Saturday Raleigh
SQL Saturday Raleigh 2019 is now live. It will take place on Saturday, April 27th at Wake Technical Community College's RTP campus. For the past three events, we hosted at William Peace University, which I absolutely enjoyed having as a venue. But with Wake Tech opening a campus just a couple of miles from the…
SQL Server ML Services Fills The Plan Cache
UPDATED 2018-03-13: SQL Server 2017 CU4 fixes this issue. See below. We call SQL Server ML Services a lot. As in building hundreds of thousands of times a day to build models. It turns out that doing this has a negative effect: ML Services plans end up staying in the plan cache and don't get removed. …
36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! 