That's a Wrap Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2024

Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2024 ran 13 July 2024. We ran our largest event error since inception in 2020. We were so pleased to be able to have 3 full tracks of sessions from speakers all round the world. The event ran for 12 hours, starting with presenters from Australia, through India, Europe, Scandinavia, UK and finishing in the USA. It was our largest event with over 400 attendees. It is our principle to never close registration until after event finishes, so the event is open.to register and join all day. It is the people who make the event, the speakers, the attendees, and helpers. The organising team had loads of fun putting the event together.

We hold 3 events a year.

• Data Toboggan - Winter Edition (full conference | end of Jan)
• Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings (full conference | beginning July)
• Data Toboggan - Alpine Coaster  (unconference real world short talks | early November)

We also have a user group that meets from time to time when there are interesting areas to cover called Data Toboggan - Slide Preparation. 

The virtual event started covering Azure Synapse Analytics when it was launched and with the introduction of Microsoft Fabric we have grown with technology innovation and now cover Microsoft Fabric, Synapse, Data Engineering, Data warehousing, and Analysis. We have a track with Microsoft Purview and AI connected elements as well. 

We look forward to seeing you all at the next event.

Data Toboggan Winter Edition 2024

Please join us on Saturday for the #DataToboggan winter edition. We have 32 speakers, 3 tracks, including an AI track. Lots of fun and learning. We also have the amazing Knee-deep in Tech not to be missed and a keynote from Kim Manis

Event Date: Saturday 3rd February 2024 

Register now for free: https://bit.ly/DT24-Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT24-Agenda

#azuresynapse #microsoftfabric #synapseanalytics #AI #artificialintelligence #copilot #openai 

Data Toboggan Winter Edition 2024

We are pleased to announce that Data Toboggan will return for its 4th year on Saturday 3rd February 2024. Our 2 track virtual conference covering covering all aspects of Azure Synapse Analytics and Fabric including Dedicated SQL Pools, Serverless SQL Pools, Spark, Pipelines, Data Engineering, Power BI, Machine Learning, and much more!

Imaged created in https://designer.microsoft.com/

Panel discussion - Microsoft Fabric and Azure Synapse

Data Toboggan - Slide Preparation has a Panel discussion on Microsoft Fabric and Azure Synapse

Thursday 27 July 2023 at 13:00 - 14:00  BST

Register for the user group event: https://bit.ly/3rG5PJD 

It's been a busy few weeks since the announcement of the new Microsoft Fabric at Build 2023. There's been a whole slew of blog posts, how-tos, videos and information generated - and it's a lot to go through !

Now that the dust is settling a bit on Fabric, it's time to step back and appraise the landscape - Is Fabric right for your Enterprise ? Is Azure Synapse still a thing ? What should we be looking towards in the short to medium term ?

The panel members are:

Dr Victoria Holt (Microsoft MVP)

Andy Cutler (Microsoft MVP)

Heini Ilmarinen (Microsoft MVP)

Mathias Halkjaer (Microsoft MVP)

Mark Pryce-Maher (Senior Program Manager - Azure Synapse)

Have a question ? Just let us know in the comments or chat and we'll see about getting an answer for you. You can even post questions during the meeting.

Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2023

The Piste maps for the Data Toboggan agenda have become a regular feature of our event. There is one for each room. They enable you to dream , learn and have fun. 

Event Date: Sat 24 June 2023

Register now: https://bit.ly/DTCR2023

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2023Agenda

Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings 2023

Submit a session for Data Toboggan – Cool Runnings, our 3rd summer edition on  Saturday 24 June 2023. 

There are two session lengths for submissions. These are: 

• 45 mins
• 10 mins

The Call for Speakers is open and awaiting your submissions on Azure Synapse related content. If you are unsure what to submit check out our YouTube channel full of past event sessions. We would love to see your sessions, new speakers or experienced speakers, so submit now.

CfS: https://sessionize.com/data-toboggan-cool-runnings-2023/

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DataToboggan

Web: https://www.datatoboggan.co.uk/

Data Toboggan Winter Edition 2023 event summary

Data Toboggan winter edition ran on Saturday 28 January 2023. This was our third year and fifth conference. We started with one track of 12 hours and this is the second conference we have had with two tracks of sessions.  So many amazing speakers and sessions of interest. 

Our speakers were from 14 countries this time

USA 10 speakers; Poland 2 speakers; Finland 1 speaker; UK 2 speakers; Germany 2 speakers; Peru 1 speaker; Denmark 2 speakers; India 1 speaker; Sweden 1 speaker; Netherlands 1 speaker; Canada 1 speaker; Brazil 1 speaker ; Uruguay 1 speaker; New Zealand 1 speaker and Australia 1 speaker.

I was pleased to see there were a lot of questions and chat in the rooms and lots of links shared for future reading material.  To help people read up on the links shared, I list them here:

Azure Room

Data Toboggan - YouTube – Watch, subscribe and like.

Data Toboggan Website for news of what is coming next

Data Toboggan | Conference Meetup group for conference registration

Data Toboggan Slide Preparation | User Group

We are putting together categories of the sessions to help people learn Azure Synapse Analytics Learning - Data Toboggan

We were asked several time do we share the videos on the YouTube channel.? We seek approval of the speakers to publish their sessions, and usually aim to publish them around 6 weeks after the event. We can not guarantee all sessions will be available to watch online.

Other learning https://events.sqlbits.com/2023/training-days

The detective agency https://detective.kusto.io/

Recommendation:  T-SQL Fundamantals by Itzik Ben-Gan as an awesome reference

Doing Power BI The Right Way

https://sqlserverbi.blog/presentations/

Analytics Room

Azure Synapse Analytics Migration Guides - Azure Synapse Analytics | Microsoft Learn

Azure Synapse Compatibility Checks - Microsoft Community Hub

Known limitations and issues with Azure Synapse Link for SQL - Azure Synapse Analytics | Microsoft Learn

Dimensional Modeling Techniques - Kimball Group

It is a Data modelling warehouse toolkit, complete star schema reference guide, agile data warehouse design

BEAM Templates — modelstorming.com https://modelstorming.com/templates

Brian Bønk Rueløkke: Slides and code for the Synapse CETAS, Views, Parquet can be found here:

public/Speaks/2023/2023-01-28 Data Toboggan at master · brianbonk/public (github.com)

 Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB, benefits, and when to use it | Microsoft Learn

MicrosoftLearning/DP-203-Data-Engineer (github.com)

Azure Synapse Analytics August Update 2022 (microsoft.com)

https://spark.apache.org/docs/3.0.0-preview/sql-ref-syntax-ddl-repair-table.html

Convert databricks noteboooks.dbc into standard .py files - Stack Overflow

Synapse Room

The whitepaper  is good documentation

Azure Synapse Analytics security white paper: Network security

A favourite podcast of ours

Knee-deep in Tech Podcast (kneedeepintech.com)

Certification links:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/certifications/azure-data-fundamentals/

Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/certifications/azure-data-engineer/?WT.mc_id=DP-MVP-5004032

Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/certifications/azure-enterprise-data-analyst-associate/?WT.mc_id=DP-MVP-5004032

Coming soon: The new Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate certification

Microsoft ESI -https://esi.microsoft.com/ 

Databricks Academy - https://www.databricks.com/learn/training/login

The exams change regularly, so for any exam it's best to review the study guide. For example here's the DP-203 one;

https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE4MbYT

Blog: https://www.KevinRChant.com
GitHub: https://github.com/kevchant

PastPresentations GitHub repository , which you can find at https://github.com/kevchant/PastPresentations

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql/develop-openrowset for difference in parser versions

Comparison table is here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-synapse-analytics-blog/understand-synapse-dedicated-sql-pool-formerly-sql-dw-and/ba-p/3594628

PVLDB Proceedings Template - WORD -> polaris whitepaper

How to use CETAS on serverless SQL pool to improve performance and automatically recreate it - Microsoft Community Hub

Synapse Spark Delta Time Travel - Microsoft Community Hub

Understand Synapse dedicated SQL pool (formerly SQL DW) and Serverless SQL pool - Microsoft Community Hub

An interesting question to think about: which term will dominate in next 5 years? will it be a data lakehouse? or data mesh? 

Monitoring Synapse serverless SQL pool query history

Monitoring serverless SQL ended requests by using Log Analytics    

I  would like to thank all the speakers for their time and amazing content. So grateful to fellow organisers Andy Cutler and Richard Munn and our moderators,  Justin Bird and Shabnam Watson. And thank you to our attendees for making the day, such a fun day. We are already ready exciting about the next one in the summer.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Start the new year with speaking at Data Toboggan 2023. 

CFS is Open : https://sessionize.com/data-toboggan-2023

Event date: 28 January 2023 

Azure Synapse Community Resources

Microsoft have released a collection of community resources to help accelerate learning and enable interaction with other members of the community. Resource guide here

In addition to the Microsoft resources are those created by presenters at the Data Toboggan set of Azure Synapse conferences. Follow, share and like us. 

Social Media

Twitter: https://twitter.com/datatoboggan  @datatoboggan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-toboggan

Conference Session recordings

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DataToboggan 

Download Microsoft guide here

Community Call to Action

 Follow us on Twitter: @Azure_Synapse

 Read and comment on our blog: https://aka.ms/SynapseBlog

 Check out our monthly updates blog: https://aka.ms/SynapseMonthlyUpdate

 Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/SynapseYouTube

 Share and vote for ideas to improve Azure Synapse: https://aka.ms/SynapseIdeas

 Join the Azure Synapse Influencers program: https://aka.ms/SynapseInfluencers

Product 

 Product page: https://aka.ms/Synapse

 Documentation: https://aka.ms/SynapseDocs

 Reference architectures: https://aka.ms/SynapseArchitectures

 Security whitepaper: http://aka.ms/SynapseSecurity

Technical Discussions and Q&A

 Microsoft Q&A: https://aka.ms/SynapseQuestions

 StackOverflow: https://aka.ms/SynapseStackOverflow

Quickstart

 Get started in 60 minutes: https://aka.ms/SynapseGetStarted

 Azure Synapse Analytics Toolkit: https://aka.ms/SynapseToolkit

Free Learning

 MS Learn – Learning paths: https://aka.ms/SynapseLearningPaths

 Synapse Practitioner : https://aka.ms/SynapsePractitioner

 Microsoft Virtual Training Days: https://aka.ms/SynapseMVTD

 30-Day Cloud Skills Challenge: https://aka.ms/SynapseSkillsChallenge

Samples & Accelerators

 Samples on GitHub: https://aka.ms/SynapseSamples

 Accelerator – End-to-End Analytics: https://aka.ms/azsynapsee2e-git

Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings event summary

On Saturday 9th July 2022 the Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings event took place. This event was the 4th large conference since its inception in December 2020. Cool Runnings is the summer edition conference for Data Toboggan. The name was influenced by the film Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh team. The phrase ‘Cool Runnings’ is defined in the film to mean ‘peace be the journey’.

There were so many amazing speakers from 16 countries worldwide with the Piste Maps becoming a speciality depicting the agenda. For the first time, Data Toboggan ran two parallel tracks to enable more content to be delivered. There was a wide variety of Azure Synapse Analytics sessions to watch in these categories:

• General Synapse and Data
• Dedicated SQL Pools
• Serverless SQL Pools and Lake databases
• Spark
• Data Explorer pools
• Integration
• Security
• Power BI
• Machine Learning and AI
• DevOps.

 

The keynote and endnote was delivered by Kim Manis, Partner Director of Product Management, Azure Synapse Analytics & Power BI at Microsoft. I felt there was an amazing change in the middle of the day - from in-depth technical sessions - to a Knee-Deep in Tech Special Synapse Podcast.

To start your Azure Synapse learning subscribe, follow and like Data Toboggans YouTube Channel, Twitter and LinkedIn .  The majority of previous session recordings are available on YouTube and keep an eye out for the latest event videos.

Also now published Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings event (coeo.com)

Cool Runnings 2022 Piste Maps

The wait is over the Cool Runnings 2022 Piste Maps are available. Not one but 2 piste maps, one for the Synapse room and one for the Analytics room . We have more then one slope that enables predictive analytics as we are running 2 tracks.

Register: https://bit.ly/DT-CR22Register Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2022Agenda #azuresynapse @Azure_Synapse

An interactive word cloud full of sessions

For our Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 9 July event we continue to evolve our analytics.

Did you interactively want to see what is included in the sessions. Check out the bottom of agenda page.

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2022Agenda

Don't forget to Register at the same time: https://bit.ly/DT-CR22Register

Session Content for Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2022

There is some amazing content to be shared in our next conference so why not spend the day learning  with 2 tracks of content to choose from. 

Register: https://bit.ly/DT-CR22Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2022Agenda 

Data Toboggan Cool Running 2022 Agenda

We are are really to announce our agenda for Data Toboggan Cool Runnings. Register now for 9 July.

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2022Agenda Register: https://bit.ly/DT-CR22Register

Data Toboggan Trivia

A little more about the Data Toboggan - Cool Runnings summer conference. 

Register: https://bit.ly/DT-CR22Register 

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2022Agenda 

Data Toboggan Conference links

During the course of the Data Toboggan 2022 winter conference day learning links were shared in the chat by various people. 

So for those wanting to learn more I have collated the links together. 

Best practices for serverless SQL pool - Azure Synapse Analytics

Recommendations and best practices for working with serverless SQL pool.

Pre recalculating datasets too 

Luke Moloney session is on GitHub

https://github.com/lmoloney/SynapseExternalTableCreator

Terraform in Azure Learn module available 

Some good MS resources around creating a Centre of Excellence using Power BI https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/center-of-excellence-establish

Machine Learning in Azure Synapse Analytics - Azure Synapse Analytics

Creating statistics on Serverless SQL Pools 

The whitepaper that Kevin Chant mentioned about a quick introduction to Azure DevOps  and his blog: https://www.KevinRChant.com and GitHub repo: https://github.com/kevchant

Azure Pipelines YAML schema reference

David Alzamendi provided a number of  Resources

Scripts: https://github.com/techtalkcorner/AzSynapseAnalytics/tree/master/Scripts/T-SQL

Data Skew: https://www.techtalkcorner.com/azure-synapse-analytics-data-skew/

Tables Design: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql/develop-tables-overview

Update statistics: https://www.techtalkcorner.com/update-statistics-azure-synapse-analytics-sql-pools/

Azure Synapse Analytics Service Levels :

Memory and concurrency limits for dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics

Columnstore Indexes: https://www.nikoport.com/

Maximize rowgroup quality for columnstore index performance

Query Store: Monitoring performance by using the Query Store

GitHub: https://github.com/techtalkcorner/AzSynapseAnalytics/tree/master/Scripts/T-SQL

Introduction to designing tables in Synapse SQL.

Design tables using Synapse SQL - Azure Synapse Analytics

Update Statistics in Azure Synapse Analytics SQL Pools -Tech Talk Corner

How to update statistics in Azure Synapse Analytics SQL Pools to improve the performance of your queries. Include two scripts.

Memory and concurrency limits - Azure Synapse Analytics

Distributed tables design guidance - Azure Synapse Analytics

Automatic aggregation in Power BI

Configuring dataflow storage to use Azure Data Lake Gen 2 - Power BI

Azure Synapse Analytics January Update 2022

The first blog of the year includes newly added database templates, a security whitepaper, and data integration updates. 

So plenty of post conference reading

Data Toboggan Piste Map

The Data Toboggan agenda is out. Take a journey with us down the slope that enables predictive analytics on 29 January.  We have lots of amazing speakers for a full 12 hours of free content specialising on Azure Synapse. We look forward to seeing you there.

Register: https://bit.ly/DT22Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2022Agenda

Data Toboggan 2022

We are pleased to announce that Data Toboggan 2022 is back on 29 January 2022. 7:45 AM to 7:59 PM GMT

Call for Speakers https://bit.ly/DT22CFS 

Register https://bit.ly/DT22Register

Details

Join us for our THIRD all-day event specializing in Azure Synapse Analytics !

Azure Synapse Analytics is a practically limitless analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics. Let's spend a day exploring and showcasing these capabilities.

It is this analytical power that will help enable any organisation to transform from being reactive into being truly proactive, generating actionable insights that enable both business flow and timely decision-support.

This is a virtual event and free to attend.

As it's our third event, there will be 3 session types:

• Standard Sessions : 45 minutes long.
• Live Short Talks : 5 to 10 minutes.
• Recorded Short Talks : 5 to 10 minutes.

We'll have most awesome content we can find, with a wide range of speakers and experience. Check out our CFS page (https://sessionize.com/data-toboggan-2022/) if you're thinking of submitting !

Let innovation drive world Azure Synapse Day 2021

Want some more information and background about our November Conference on 12 November 2021. One of our organisers has written a great post explaining it here.

You can read it here as well

So, while there’s been all this stuff going on, a couple of data friends and I started a conference series and a user group both focused on Azure Synapse Analytics. Because, you know.. you can never have too many online conferences, training sessions, and presentations, right ?

We’ve probably all attended online lerns recently, been to meetings online, chatted with friends and family over new and sometimes unfamiliar apps like Teams and Zoom (yes, the nerds have been using them for a while, but collab apps just went *wild* recently).

But we (as in me and the aforementioned data friends) wanted to do something different. Something more…. interactive. More…. conversational. Less “I’ll sign up and download the recordings later, maybe“. And so, somewhat concietedly, we came up with ‘World Azure Synapse Day 2021’, where we can share, chat, learn, and laugh (maybe) to round out the year. A sort of retrospective on the future, if you like.

Full disclosure: we didn’t come up with the format ourselves. A few months back, a company called DataStax did something similar for the worldwide Apache Cassandra community where they had short talks from the engineering team, the sales people, their marketing. We’re aiming for something waaaayyyy less corporate, and more about you  We just borrowed the good bits and left out the sales pitch.

So we’re doing three sessions on the day, timed to hopefully coincide with people’s availability in each of APAC, EMEA, and AMER time-zones. We hope it will feel a bit more like a meeting than a presentation, as there’ll be several short talks and interviews in each. The sessions will *not* be recorded (sorry, you’re going to have to be there to see it !) – it’s really important to us that each session flows and everyone can participate, and recording that doesn’t seem fair. We’re also not even publishing an agenda, just a schedule of who will be talking at each session – we want the speakers to speak for themselves in every way possible – so there’s no pressure on anyone to ‘get it right first time’, and each and every contribution is welcome.

If you want to attend (and we hope you do), please sign up to the MeetUp for Data Toboggan here. There’s also a code of conduct under the heading ‘Be Excellent To Each Other’ that we’d ask you to adhere to, but that’s all you have to do. If you want to have your voice heard, just submit some thoughts through Sessionize, and we’ll be in contact. And don’t hesitate to ask any question you like in the MeetUp group – we’ll make sure you get a response 

Hope to see you at Data Toboggan – World Azure Synapse Day 2021 ! Until then, stay safe.

The Data Toboggan Team

Data Toboggan World Azure Synapse Day

We are back for another edition of Data Toboggan, but we'd like to do something a bit different this time round.

In the last year, Azure Synapse has celebrated its second birthday, and we've all been busy doing awesome stuff with the capabilities of the platform and loving every minute. 

We want *you* to tell us how Azure Synapse Analytics inspires you, empowers you, and how it accelerates your business analytics. Tell us your stories, and what you're hoping for in the coming 12 months of Azure Synapse...

So, this next edition of Data Toboggan won't be a full-day, tech-focussed event.

Instead, we're planning on doing three 1 to 2 hour community sessions where we listen to you tell your story in a more open format.

We're not looking for long sessions - ideally each speaker would get 10 to 15 minutes to share and discuss. We're targeting Friday 12th November as the delivery date, with 3 sessions running at locally convenient times for APAC, EMEA and AMER (times are GMT, because that's where we are, and we hope they translate to 'convenient').

APAC - 08:00 GMT

EMEA - 12:00 GMT

AMER - 17:00 GMT

Look out for submission links heading your way soon ! You can submit to talk at any of the sessions - whichever is most convenient for you.

Thanks for being with us this year. We hope you'll enjoy sticking around for a while.

Stay safe,

The Data Toboggan Team.