Develop data-driven applications by using Azure SQL Database | Data Exposed

Key Takeaways

learn about a learning path that can help you stay upto-date on how to develop datadriven applications with Azure SQL database even better learn how you can get a credential to say that you can do it this week on data [Music] exposed hi I'm Anna Hoffman and welcome to this episode of data exposed today I'm joined by Jerry Nixon from the Azure SQL product group Jerry why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do thanks Anna yeah you bet and I'm on the team called developer experiences is one of the best things we've re really like spun up inside SQL Server it's basically turning our attention away from not away from that's not not the right way to say it but toward the developer making sure their experience is as frictionless and as like rewarding as we can make it so that has to do with tooling and libraries and I'm part of data AP Builder and so all of those sorts of things really just meant to make the de developers life easier especially around SQL awesome great we love to hear that and as developers I'm sure watching the show they love to hear that and today we're going to be talking about some new things that have come up in this space of kind of Silling Skilling and getting certified and so I'd love to just pass to you and you know tell us what's new and what should people know yeah that's terrific so we have a relatively new um learning path that I want to walk through so there's this situation where we are constantly injecting new Innovations inside Azure SQL and so all kinds of things are happening and it's easy I think for developers to feel like a lot of this is slipping through their fingers you know they're they're not necessarily keeping up with all the things that are happening and so we've created a new learning path called the develop datadriven applications by using Azure SQL database nice and long obviously it's a Microsoft title and that is really intended to make it so any developer who has interest in SQL but more importantly is interested in all the new fancy things that have been introduced in the last handful of years they've all been collapsed down into a single learning path that allows you to step through each one of those and feel confident that you're keeping up with all of the things that are happening and able to really demonstrate your own Proficiency in them as well and so there's two things here the first one is there is a learning path and it is you know it's of course itself self-paced and it goes through different modules to help you learn and understand different things but we also have then an applied skill so an applied skill is a little bit different than a certification and so an applied skill it well it cordin off a small piece of azure for the student or for the learner to be able to go in and have a list of operations that they need to perform that they actually do against Real services in Azure and then we have written on the back end different scripts to look at the services that they have made changes to or the things that they've written or introduced and be able to see that they have accomplished those different PS as well so it's different than taking a test it's really about going in and really demonstrating real proficiency so if I were just a here we are if I were to scroll down and show you well this is the um learning this is the learning path I could go in and click continue here and it would start me through all of the different pieces and modules inside that learning path or I could scroll a little bit lower and say take assessment and when I do that begins the setup and everything around the applied skill and so an applied skill is a pretty neat credential we give it to you from Microsoft you can put it on LinkedIn or wherever it is that you show off that you're really smart and it's a neat thing honestly to be able to show that I didn't go in and guess at a bunch of questions I had to actually perform the operations to show that that it's there and so some of the things that are included in this by the way are I'm just going to scroll to the bottom here this is tasks performs yeah so yeah there you go but it's a uh it's it's a a series of things that you would do in the real world so one of them would be what if you had a Json uh document that was in Blob storage and you needed to import that into SQL and you wanted to use a rest API to do it and call it from tsql all of these different things are capabilities that we've introduced the ability to do from inside SQL in the last year or two and so it's that kind of thing where you're like oh we have all of these puzzle pieces if we put them together to be able to do something that's real world and kind of Novel at the same time let's show that we can do it inside this supplied skill and so that one of them is being able to import data manipulate Json is another one another one is changing tracking inside of a t or track uh tracking inside of a table so that we can use it inside an Azure function and respond to the changes that happen being able to set up and deploy um data API Builder is another one so you can have a simple rest inpoint over SQL and there you go it's completely free that's the way Ms learn works and it's that's another way it's a little bit different than a certification so we if you ask me it's more than a certification it's the thing that really shows not only are you clever but you're also capable and it's a a neat thing that we've been able to do for our developer Community to help them feel like the things that we're doing speak to real operations that they would do in their normal professional life but also we've kind of put it in a box so that they can feel like if I learned this then I've started to really understand all these new capabilities nice I love it and then um just for my understanding like from your perspective like this learning path I'm guessing has like a series of modules and those modules I read some I do some and then when I'm done with the learning path that's when I do the the skill any advice on how to go through this or how how long someone might spin to learn all this stuff or yeah that's a great Point well first of all I would say from an advice point of view take it seriously because um it's probably harder than you think it's going to be right because these sorts of operations aren't just click and I'm done it's going to be a handful of configur ations to make sure that it works this shows not only your awareness and kind of understanding of the capabilities of SQL but also kind of its place in the overall ecosystem of azure as well and so there are some things that are there it's time limited there's a box around it and when you get towards the end of that time you can extend it and so if you're feeling like oh man I'm so close don't worry you can extend it several times to give yourself that capability so if you go into it give yourself probably two hours perhaps three to really think this all the way through so that you can have the that you need to be successful in it if you aren't successful you can take it again uh we just cause you to wait a couple of days before you can take it again but the whole idea is if you don't know anything about it you start with a learning path and you go through there once you start feeling confident and comfortable then you would start moving over to the applied skill and trying it out and if if at first you don't succeed you know try and try again because that's the whole point it is really meant to show you can actually do it that's the reason it's difficult because these sorts of things are sophisticated and require us to really understand what's going on behind the scenes awesome no I love that I think um well I haven't gone through this learning path or the applied skill but I definitely want to go try it out uh I think I could do some of these things that I I'd probably need to rely on the learning path and bresh up on some other things um oh yeah you definitely have uh you definitely have the docs open on one monitor you have your actual Azure open on the other then you have this test on another and that's not cheating right like that's not cheating we just want to see that you can do it that's exactly right that's exactly nice awesome any any other things that folks should know or tips or tricks or anything like that no this is it I mean just you know I mean other than taking it seriously just know that you'll buckle down and actually do it maybe go through and try it for the first time it's actually sort of fun because it's set up as if your manager is sending you tasks and so you know Anna for the first thing I you know we have these files that are in storage will you set up the security so we can access them and then write a stored procedure so that we can put them in SQL that's pretty cool right I mean it's not they do this do this do this it's what would you do in the real world and how would your manager potentially ask you to do it and so it's a it's sort of fun at the same time so it sort of takes a little bit of the stress off and it's just a a clean and easy way to know in a kind of a reliable sense that anybody who has this credential they get it they understand what's going on and so the learning path has its own value to kind of bring everybody up to speed and the applied skill has this other side of giving you a credential to be able to show you really do get it awesome cool I love it uh well Jerry thanks so much for coming on the show I learned a lot and now I have a new resource to go learn a lot more and then prove myself and maybe in an upcoming episode I'll show off my uh skill background um to our viewers if you like this episode go ahead give it a like leave us a comment let us know if you've done the learning path and show us your skill if you earned that applied skill we'll put some links in the description for you to learn more and we hope to see you next time on day exposed [Music]