Azure Data Factory with Andy Leonard and Big Data Clusters with Ben Weissman

On September 25th, we are excited to have not just one, but two Microsoft Data Platform MVPs presenting for us!

Andy Leonard will kick off the evening with his remote session about Azure Data Factory, before Ben Weissman will show us new possibilities with Big Data Clusters in SQL Server 2019.

Food and mingling will start around 17:00, Andy will start his presentation around 17:20, and Ben will start his presentation around 18:30.

See you there! :)

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Moving Data with Azure Data Factory
with Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics

Azure Data Factory - ADF - is a cloud data engineering solution. ADF version 2 sports a snappy web GUI (graphical user interface) and supports the SSIS Integration Runtime (IR) - or "SSIS in the Cloud." Attend this session to learn:

• How to build a "native ADF" pipeline;
• How to lift and shift SSIS to the Azure Data Factory integration Runtime; and
• ADF Design Patterns to execute and monitor pipelines and packages.

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Andy Leonard is founder and Chief Data Engineer at Enterprise Data & Analytics, Microsoft Data Platform MVP, author, creator of the DILM (Data Integration Lifecycle Management) Suite, an SSIS Trainer, Consultant, and developer, a Business Intelligence Markup Language (Biml) developer and BimlHero, SQL Server database and data warehouse developer, community mentor, engineer, and farmer.

He is a co-author of The Biml Book and SQL Server Integration Services Design Patterns and author of Managing Geeks - A Journey of Leading by Doing, Data Integration Lifecycle Management with SSIS, Building Custom Tasks for SSIS, and the Stairway to Integration Services.

Andy blogs at andyleonard.blog where you can learn more on the About Andy page. He may be followed on Twitter @AndyLeonard.

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Introducing SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters
with Ben Weissman, Managing Director, Solisyon GmbH
Level: 300

In the realm of data storage and processing, there are two major technologies which we deal with every day. On one side, we have relational data that is stored inside SQL Server, and on the other side, non-relational or very large datasets that do not fit the relational model which are stored on big data clusters like Hadoop or Spark.

This introduces challenges when having to combine datasets across both these technologies. SQL Server was never built to process huge datasets in a distributed fashion or to handle non-relational data very well, meaning that in many cases you would have to resort to bringing your relational data into Hadoop or Spark clusters.

SQL Server 2019 has the answer with Big Data Clusters: it combines SQL Server with HDFS and Spark!

In this session we are going to explore the capabilities of the exciting new feature called SQL Server Big Data Clusters. How does it work and how can we work with datasets that are non-relational?

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Ben Weissman has been working with SQL Server since SQL Server 6.5, mainly in the BI/Datawarehousing field. He is a Data Platform MVP, MCSE Data Management and Analytics, MPP Big Data, MPP AI, MPP Data Science, and MPP Data Analytics. He is also the first BimlHero Certified Expert in Germany, a co-author of The Biml Book, and a Certified Data Vault Data Modeler.

Ben has been involved in about 150 BI Projects and is always looking for ways to become more productive and make SQL Server even more fun!

Together with his team at Solisyon, Ben provides training, implementation, and consultancy for SQL/BI developers and data analysts in (upper-) mid-market companies around the globe.