I am incredibly thankful for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Data Platform Award this year. It has been an incredibly tough year caring for my very ill mother, who has sadly now died. Being able to try and help the community has been the one thing that has given me purpose whilst caring for mum. I know she would be so proud and pleased that I have been been recognised with this award. My grateful thanks go to Microsoft for the award and the community with whom I work.
Data Toboggan Cool Runnings is on Saturday 12 July 2025. Our first Cool Runnings summer event was in 2020. This was one track. Today we have 3 tracks of talks over a 12 hour period.
Bramberg
Pradaschier
Rigi Kaltbad
Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2025-Agenda
Register now: https://bit.ly/DTCR2025-Register
I am not attending SQLBits this year, the first time ever due to the sad loss of my mum the week before.
It is incredibly kind of SQLBits to set their charity in celebration of her remarkable life.
SQLBits’ charity of 2025 is the National Museum of Computing, the world’s largest collection of working historic computers, based at Bletchley Park. This fantastic charity has been chosen by longstanding SQLBits helper, Dr Victoria Holt, in honour of her mum, Joan Frances Holt (nee Clark), who she sadly lost last week.
If you would like to donate this is the page here.
Read more about her remarkable story and this remarkable charity here https://lnkd.in/gsjRpFMP
Mum’s computing years
At this sad time I wanted to share that my amazing mother, Joan Frances Holt (nee Clark), died on Monday after a 8 month long struggle with arterial disease and blood cancer. A person who was always timid, humble and never talked much about her accomplishments. She started out life being born at the start of the second world war, playing on the streets decimated by incendiary bombs in Portsmouth and only recently discovered more details about her dad who was awarded the Imperial Service Medal (ISM) for long and faithful service in HM Dockyards following his 20 years in the army. She was married to dad for 64 years.
Seven months after leaving school in March 1958, mum started as an
Assistant Experimental Officer (AEO) at Aldermaston. A post normally only
available to people with degrees, but mums maths was outstanding and was
referred for the job by her headmistress at Portsmouth Grammar School. She
learnt to program on the Ferranti Mk 1*, with a list of instructions with their
binary equivalents, considered an old computer even then. The Ferranti Mk 1*
had a large number of valves requiring servicing frequently that could only be
run for a short time, which took punch cards. Mum worked on the very
latest, state of the art, computer, the IBM 704 mainframe which was among only
2 in the country, the other being at Harwell, mum thought. There were 2 people
operating the machine which had several huge magnetic tapes standing in
cabinets about 6ft high, a printer, card input and output machines and a
central console. Mum was impressed to work on this. She attended a
programming course on the IBM 704 and from printouts asked to draw a graph from
the information in 2 columns. The start of modern-day analytics. She
learnt how computers were constructed and how the data was stored. The
main content of course training included programming the computer to carry out
instructions using a symbolic assembly code, to read card input and produce a
printout of results. At the end of the 2 weeks, she had to write a
program to calculate sin x. She had to use the machines to type out the
program on punched cards, which were then converted to binary by an assembler
on the computer.
In contrast, Mum and Dad both were involved in amateur filmmaking of cine films at Harpenden Cine Society in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Walking in the lake district and travelling in France became a regular occurrence for her, from her 20’s
A small snapshot into a varied and extraordinary life, always an adventurer, and above all family centric and loved so much.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7338818960726929409/
Microsoft Build 2025 took place from 19 to 22 May in Seattle, Washington. It was a four-day event packed with announcements on AI, agentic platforms, and developer tools.
This year’s Microsoft Build felt less like a tech conference and more like a glimpse into a future already unfolding. What emerged was a tapestry of tools and ideas woven not just for developers, but for thinkers, makers, and leaders who believe technology should feel like an extension of purpose.
Microsoft Fabric continues to evolve and not just as a platform, but as a philosophy. It’s now the connection between data engineering, real-time intelligence, and business insight. The new Digital Twin Builder lets us model the world as we experience it: layered, imperfect, alive. And with Cosmos DB now embedded in Fabric, the boundary between structured and unstructured data feels less rigid, more fluid. It was exciting to see SQL Server grow with another release.
Some of the data and AI announcements from Microsoft Build 2025
AI Agents & Copilot Enhancements
Copilot Tuning – Preview: Customize Copilot with your own data and workflows for domain-specific tasks
Multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio – Preview: Enables agents to collaborate across tasks
Microsoft Entra Agent ID - Preview: Assigns unique identities to agents for governance
Agent Store - Generally Available: Discover and deploy agents across Microsoft 365 endpoints
Bring Your Own Models (BYOM) – Preview: Use over 1,900 Azure AI Foundry models in Copilot Studio
Data Platforms & Analytics
Power BI changes enable you to chat with your data. The preview of Standalone Copilot in Power BI was quietly revolutionary. Now, natural language becomes the interface. It’s not just about data literacy; it’s about data empathy. A new Copilot-powered experience for users to interact with their data through natural language, across any inputs, semantic models, apps and data agents they have access to.
Data agents in Microsoft Fabric serve as virtual business analysts, which you can bring right into Copilot Studio and deploy across Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot
Cosmos DB in Microsoft Fabric – Preview: Adds NoSQL capabilities to Fabric Databases
Digital Twin Builder in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence – Preview: Create virtual replicas of physical/logical entities
Standalone Copilot in Power BI – Preview: Natural language interface to query across reports
Translytical Task Flows in Power BI – Preview: Enables write-back and automation from reports
AI Development & Infrastructure
SQL Server 2025 – Public Preview: AI-ready enterprise database with native integration. It is designed to securely power AI applications—transforming into a vector database in its own right.
Azure Cosmos DB Vector Search – Preview: Store and query vector embeddings for generative AI
Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Vector Embeddings – Preview: Generate embeddings via SQL for RAG apps
Azure AI Foundry Agent Service – Generally Available: Build and orchestrate multi-agent systems
Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Supported: Open protocol for agentic web interoperability
The rise of AI agents was at the heart of Build 2025. Not tools, not assistants but colleagues. With Copilot Tuning, organisations can shape agents using their own language, workflows, and values. It’s low-code, but high-trust. And with multi-agent orchestration, these entities collaborate across domains: HR, IT, marketing.
Open Protocols, Open Possibilities
Microsoft’s embrace of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and the launch of NLWeb signal a shift toward an open agentic web. It’s a vision where websites speak in semantic layers, and agents navigate with nuance. HTML gave us structure; NLWeb may give us meaning.
Discovery and the Scientific Imagination
Perhaps the most exciting announcement was Microsoft Discovery. An agentic platform for research and development offering a new enterprise agentic platform, which uses specialized agents and graph-based knowledge to accelerate research and development for scientists.
Build 2025 wasn’t just about what’s new. It was about what’s next and who gets to shape it.
The eighth edition of the AI Index report is out. The 2025 Index is the most comprehensive to date as AI’s influence across society, the economy, and global governance continues to intensify
In the report it covers
The Microsoft AI Skills Fest is starting from 8 April 2025 to 28 May 2025 to enhance your AI skills and unlock the future. From experiential content to hackathons, there is a lot of opportunity to learn at all levels.
Register today: https://msft.it/6042qSzcE
