Welcome

Passionately curious about Data, Databases and Systems Complexity. Data is ubiquitous, the database universe is dichotomous (structured and unstructured), expanding and complex. Find my Database Research at SQLToolkit.co.uk . Microsoft Data Platform MVP

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing" Einstein



Monday, 18 November 2024

Data Toboggan Winter Edition 2025

We are excited to announce that the winter edition, our main Data Toboggan conference,  has Call for Speakers open. This will be our 5th year so will be really exciting for us to reach that milestone.
This is our multi-track 12 hours conference to cover a many time zones.  Help us make this a really special event. 

Event Date: Saturday 25 January 2025  

If you  want to watch recordings from our summer conference or others,  Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2024 now has 68 videos on You Tube




 

Thursday, 7 November 2024

PASS 24 Data Community Summit

This week it is PASS 24 Data Community Summit







The Microsoft Keynote was entitled, Fuel AI innovation with Azure Databases.

The session abstract: Data is the fuel for innovation, driving the development of transformative AI applications. In this keynote, join Shireesh and the Microsoft engineering team as they explore harnessing the power of data across the Azure databases portfolio to drive ground breaking advancements. Take your first step on the journey with vector search, multi-agent apps and more and learn to unlock new patterns like retrieval augmented generation (RAG).  Explore the latest database innovations in SQL Server, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL that enhance operational efficiency, deliver personalized user experiences, and revolutionize the way we interact with technology. 

There were some great announcements 

Announcing

  • SSMS 21 and Copilot in SSMS
  • Azure SQL Database Hyperscale enhancements (Storage up to 128TB (GA) Log throughput rate up to 150 MB per second (Preview) , Continuous priming (Preview))

Preview

  • Next gen general purpose on Azure SQL Managed Instance (32TB of storage, 500 DBs, Lower storage latency, improved storage importance, customisable I/O performance)
  • Migration Assessment from SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc
  • Mirroring in Fabric for Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB
  • In-database embedding generation
  • Vector Indexing and search in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
  • Native vector type and functions in Azure SQL Database (Available now)
  • DiskANN indexing in Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Generally available

  • Bi-directional disaster recovery with link feature in Azure SQL Managed Instance
  • Flat and quantized flat vector indexes in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
  • Serverless auto-pause delay to 15 min
  • Azure AI extension
  • Hyperscale elastic pools
  • Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB enhancements

Tuesday, 5 November 2024

Data Toboggan Alpine Coaster 2024

Alpine Coaster is our shorter 3 time zone end of year unconference event. You know we like to mix things up with this version of Data Toboggan, so this time:

Sessions are around 20 minutes long.

There are three session editions to join. APAC 7:30 8:40 | EMEA 12:30 - 1:40 | AMER 5:30 - 6:10 GMT, join one or all

Please note, there will be no recordings taken on the day. We feel that kinda takes the pressure off a little for this short session more interactive type of event.

Register now for the Alpine Coaster event: Friday 8 November 2024

APAC Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285946/

EMEA Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285953/

AMER Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285956/





Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing needs consent

There are changes to Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing beyond 1 November 2024. 

NOTE: The new pricing model for Microsoft Purview Data Governance now goes into effect on January 6, 2025.

The article on Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing consent explains the new pricing model for Microsoft Purview Data Governance. Users who have been using the data catalog for free will need to consent to the new pay-as-you-go billing model to continue using the service beyond this date. The consent process involves accepting the terms and conditions through a pop-up in the Microsoft Purview portal.

If the necessary consent is not provided by the Entra Global Admin, data governance concepts created in the unified portal will be retained for 120 days. The roles required to provide consent include the Microsoft Entra Global administrator or the Microsoft Entra Compliance administrator role, along with the DataMap curator role.


Read more about it here

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/purview-portal-billing-consent

Monday, 21 October 2024

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention policies have been extended to Fabric lakehouses

Microsoft Purview's Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies have been extended to Fabric lakehouses and are now in public preview. This extension follows the success of DLP for Power BI and the general availability of Microsoft Fabric last year1. DLP policies help automatically detect sensitive information as it is uploaded into lakehouses and take risk remediation actions to comply with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Compliance and Security administrators will receive audit logs for every detection and can set up alerts for sensitive information found in their Fabric lakehouses. There will be no charge for lakehouses scanned by DLP policies during the preview period.

You can read more here



Microsoft AI Tour London 2024

The Microsoft AI Tour in London on 21 October 2024 talked about solving the biggest challenges and uncovering new opportunities to empower your organization. The Opening Keynote was with Clare Barclay, Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro.  There were discussions on building an agentic world where  personal agents, organisational agents, business process agents and cross organisation agents enable the use of AI in business to assist you with work. An example of this is Pages for AI artifacts that enables you to work with the organisation and AI . The 3 areas of innovations

  • Copilot
  • Copilot & AI Stack
  • Copilot devices

These innovative areas will increase value and reduce waste and Copilot Studio for autonomous agents was announced. 

A very important announcement, for us in the UK, is that Microsoft and UK Government have signed a five-year agreement to support the new era of digital transformation. So a very exciting time for the UK to grow.

There is gravity with data. AI needs to bring all the data together in one platform like Microsoft Fabric, to simplify data and have App servers, AI apps and tools. Microsoft showed its unified data offering in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to unify the data estate, at what ever stage a business is at, for databases and analytics. 



Trust is the most important thing in #AI. You must have a set of principles considering Security, Privacy, Safety at the core



AI is redefining Britain. It can take longer to realise value as change and adoption management takes time. It is cheaper to innovate than before so we need to think big, think bold and be ambitious 

Satya finished with 4 important points to note: expand opportunity, earn trust, protect fundamental rights and advance sustainability.

The announcement today can be read here

Autonomous agent capabilities across Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 to help scale the impact of every individual, team, and business function

Monday, 30 September 2024

What's new for Data Toboggan

There are plenty of things coming from Data Toboggan.

Videos from the last conference are being published on YouTube 

Alpine Coaster call for speakers is open https://sessionize.com/data-toboggan-alpine-coaster-2024/

The Winter conference date to add to your diaries: 25 January 2025.