Cloud Data Platform Weekly

Good morning to you on this fine Friday, I hope you've had a good week and ready for the weekend whatever it is you are doing.

There's a few things going on in the last week or so including new videos and events, so let's get to it.

DP-500 - The Essential Guide to the new Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate Certification

Nikola Ilic and I presented on our favourite topic at the Denmark Microsoft Data Platform user group, and Brian B?nk has made the session available on YouTube (thanks to Brian). This also includes the recent (small) changes made to the DP-500 skills measured so be sure to check it out if you're interested in this certification.

Delta Tables in Azure Synapse Analytics - What's Going On?

Over on my Datahai YouTube channel I went through the scenarios in Synapse Analytics when creating partitioned Delta tables in both Lake Databases and Serverless SQL Pools databases, quite interesting and annoying in equal measure as there's a gotcha...check out the video if you are intending to use the Delta format with Synapse.

Well-Architected Framework - Assessing Your Azure Synapse Analytics Readiness

It's a double video week as there's a video on one of my favourite non-technical resources...the Azure Well-Architected Framework and the Assessments. This is really useful if you need to see how ready you are to implement Synapse Analytics. It guides you through a set of questions (there are no right or wrong answers) and then gives you documentation afterwards to ensure you're as knowledgeable as possible.

Power BI and Synapse Analytics at the Oxford (UK) Microsoft Data Platform Meet-up

I'll probably call this out in the next newsletters too but the Oxford Microsoft Data Platform Meetup is starting again by Felicity Nyan and Robert Minchin . I'll be there in-person talking about the essential features between Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics that really make these platforms the dream team...plus some lesson's learned too. Richard will be talking about Power BI External Tools, including one of my favourite tools the ALM Toolkit (great tool).

It's also hybrid so there'll be a Teams link around the time.

Register here: Wednesday March 1st 2023

Community

Here are a few community links that I've enjoyed too:

1. ?? Johnny Winter ?? is over on the Advancing Analytics channel talking about the Power BI Databricks Connector with Native SQL. More here.
2. Madison Schott has a great blog about Analytics Engineering and comparing with a Business Intelligence Developer. Read more.
3. Kevin Chant covers the new update to sqlpackage that now enables database projects support with Synapse Serverless SQL Pools (finally!). More here.
4. Ryan Majidimehr has some Synapse Analytics studio hints and tips over on the Synapse channel. More here.

Take care and see you soon.