Azure SQL Revealed 2nd Edition Book | Data Exposed

Key Takeaways

Bob ward has written another book Azure sequel revealed second edition learn all about it and why you should read it and what could be next this week on data [Music] expose hi I'm Anna Hoffman and welcome to this episode of data exposed today I'm joined by Bob Ward from the SQL team uh who is no stranger to anyone on data Expos but uh thanks so much for joining us again and thanks so much for having me great to be on Dat exposed again I'm wearing the shirt I love it I love it and it's great to have you on the show and today we're going to be talking about yet another book that you've written I hear and you believe that yes I've not another book uh this time it's called Azure sequel revealed second edition okay super exciting to hear about that um can't wait to read it uh actually I have already read it you wrote the forward yeah I hope you oh I hope you read it already read it um but yeah so I wanted to talk a little bit about the book so for folks who you know didn't read the first edition or or maybe haven't heard of this book before can you tell us a little bit about this book and why someone might want to read it yeah it's a great question so my the whole premise when I started to write this book was there are plenty of people out there that have SQL Server knowledge I've been a SQL server for a long time but they're either thinking about moving to the cloud they've moved to the cloud a little bit they're not quite sure but they want to translate those great SQL Server skills to Azure so that was the whole premise in just the whole philosophy behind like why write a book like why not give you know some knowledge that I've learned myself as I made that Journey Through the cloud you it's funny because you and I together we did some training on this and so forth uh back during like 2020 so that was the whole premise of just getting the book done in the first place awesome yeah and it's it's really been a hit like people loved this book they've used it to kind of translate their SQL Server expertise to aure SQL understand what's different and all that stuff so can you tell us a little bit more about like what's in the book sure well of all the books that I do write I always like to start with a history chapter this was a challenging one cuz I had to go back and actually interview people that don't work for Microsoft anymore like Ted Kumer uh that doesn't work at Microsoft anymore because he was a vice president at that time as we made this decision to move to Azure so it was really fun to go back and and and interview even people still at Microsoft today about the history of azure the history of azure sequel so I always start with that history chapter and then what I do is go through a series of just like some basic fundamentals so the first thing I do is cover a chapter just on like what is azure itself like the e system of azure just you can learn about what it's like to be in the cloud independent of SQL then I'll do chapters like on Azure virtual machine because that's a great option for customers to lift and shift SQL Server to the cloud and then at that point what I'll do is cover more the past Services as your database and managed instance and I'll go to this sequence as you might as a customer yourself to it how do you deploy it how do you configure it how to maybe like migrate into the cloud and then do you remember the meat and potatoes oh yeah I can't forget the meat and what are the meat and potato the meat and potatoes yeah so I'll do secure performance and availability right go through that whole sequence and then kind of finish it off with kind of things that are maybe outside that scope of the engine how to like complete your journey in AER how to do more with the cloud so amazing it sounds pretty comprehensive so it's hyperfocused it's hyperfocused yeah exactly it's a joke I used to tell Bob all the time he very hyperfocused um Bob uh you know like let's say I have read the first edition I'm looking at the second edition like kind of what's different obviously it's been a couple years but what's different between the two editions can you believe it's been four years wow I know that's why I mean so late last year I thought to myself like let's write another book I get that question all the time I thought well let's do I do a new one but so much has changed in Azure sequel of the time it's funny and as I went through and thought about the second edition I went looked at the first edition almost every like screenshot had to be updated but even new technologies like hypers scales evolve quite a bit and of course as you look at the subtitle this book there's something called AI that has become very popular and also Microsoft fabric so I thought to myself there's new technologies to integrate SQL with the cloud there's updates based on things we've done to innovate with Azure SQL so I thought there was enough material to update the first one and kind of bring everybody up to speed because that's what's happening in the cloud itself so the book is going to follow that same premise I just talked about except what I'll do is I'll end the book on a chapter completely talking about how to use SQL Technologies both with AI and Microsoft fabric oh wow exciting cool pretty neat cool stuff um well excited I'm sure people are to get their hands on this now Bob this is not your first book or your first second edition so like what other books have you written do you believe this check this out wow I know I know somebody asked me you know you just wrote this book like is this like this is the second one then because a second I'm like no I actually written five books wow I know it's incredible you know one of the passions I have is to transfer my knowledge to others and also I'd like to learn so writing books make you really deeply learn and I started out with Linux way back in 2018 because I used to do Linux for a living before I joined Microsoft and nobody had a SQL Linux book back then so it started then as you can see this Evolution here when we have a new version of SQL Server coming along it made sense for me to kind of write one on that right wrote This Cloud book and then of course now the the latest edition for Azure SQL revealed so I can't even believe I've written five books every time I write one of these I say to myself I'm never doing this again and ginger my poor wife just like I don't want you doing this again but then I think of just the passion I have to to you know write these things and transfer my knowledge and I also this other passion andna I I donate all my royalties my books to charity wow so it's a passion of mine to give back to same charity every no I pick different charities I I try to find a charity often ones that Microsoft matches and I love that passion to give back to others and like I have this hashtag you know pay it forward so anytime these books come out with royalties that's another passion of why I do it as well so wow that's amazing book um okay so then looking at this slide like my next obvious question I feel like is what's next what are you going to write a book about next it's funny you know I get done with a book and people are like well what's the next one I'm like can I take a breather for a second I'm not sure I will tell you that AI is just an incredible technology right now that's taken the industry by force and all Us by force so that might be a logical uh next book I think we'll see okay all right you know no promises here but you heard it here first all right well thanks so much Bob for coming on the show sharing the the inside scoop on your book and your other books um for our viewers uh we'll put a link or several links in the description for you to go learn more if you want to check out the new azure revealed second edition book um and if you like this episode go ahead give it a like leave us a comment let us know what you think and we hope to see you next time on day exposed [Music]