Writing this the week after SQLBits 2023, I’m realising that it’s the type of thing that I probably should have done at the start of the year. However, I’ve never been particularly good at New Year’s Resolutions. Spring seems a much better time for change than the middle of the darkest season of the year!
The benefit of writing this after a week-long data conference is that I have a fresh list of things I want to learn about & this will help me to prioritise them & set goals for the next several months. Also, I’m pretty energised after attending a variety of training days & sessions.
What I’m learning right now
As I write this, I’m very close to finishing Drew Furgiuele’s Fundamentals of PowerShell for DBAs course. It’s been a really useful introduction to PowerShell & I’m hoping that I’ll find more reasons to practise it in my work. The SQL Server estate I currently administrate isn’t huge but I can still see areas where PowerShell would allow me to automate away some of the regular tasks. And PowerShell is really useful for working with Azure, which is something I’m aiming to do a lot more of. Yes, you can do loads in the Azure Portal but PowerShell fills the gaps where they exist.
What’s queued up
Next up is Azure Data Factory. I attended Andy Leonard’s training day at SQLBits this year & again, it was a great introduction. I’m going to take what I learned there & combine it with Cathrine Wilhelmsen’s Beginner’s Guide & some hands-on practice to grow my skills in this area. I’ve developed ETL/ELT processes in SSIS & T-SQL in the past & now it’s time to start bringing my experience to the cloud.
Beyond that…
After ADF, it’s time for me to look at automation, specifically Azure DevOps. The second SQLBits training day I attended was Erin Dempster’s one on that very topic. This was a very hands-on day of training & I’m looking forward to putting together my own automation pipelines. From what I learned so far, I think it will be really useful for automating deployments of both database projects & ETL processes.
One other very cool thing that caught my eye was pbi-tools. Like all of my other data projects at work, I use git to version control Power BI projects but I’ve never been entirely happy with the process. The PBI files are little black boxes & it’s difficult to tell exactly what’s changed from one version to the next (even with detailed commit comments). If pbi-tools provides a more useful method of version control for Power BI, then the time I spend learning about it will be really well spent.
Looking at the above, it feels that there’s a lot there to get through, especially as I enjoy digging deep into tools, platforms & processes & getting to understand them well. And on top of that, there are the changes to my life & career that I’m aiming to achieve over the next year.
My future
Top priority: I want to move back to the EU. Between London & Edinburgh, I’ve been living in the UK for over 15 years & I’ve loved it for the most part, but I never planned to be living outwith1 the EU & it’s not something I want to do long-term. Last year involved a lot of consideration & investigating options, & after all that, my partner & I decided to move to Bilbao in Spain. So in addition to all of the above learning that I’m looking to do, I’m also learning Spanish (Castellano/Castilian specifically). It’s slow progress (¡progreso lento y doloroso!) but it is progress nonetheless.
Regarding my career, I want to leverage my database & ETL skills to move further towards Data Engineering. I enjoy building systems that work well & doing that for moving data is always a fantastic challenge. Building & automating robust data pipelines seems really interesting to me. Plus, I’m looking to increase my knowledge of cloud platforms (the above learning goals should help with some of that!).
All of which brings me to…
Blogging
The past few years have taken a toll on my blogging. The paradigm shift of the pandemic meant I had to be ruthless in prioritising what was important. Mainly, this meant adapting to the “new normal”, maintaining my health (mental & physical), & concentrating on getting my day job done. At the same time, some things fell off my priority list & one of those was blogging. Sure, I published a few posts each year but I’m aiming to outdo that this year. Nothing drastic. I’m going to set myself a goal of six posts by the end of the year (excluding this one, it doesn’t count because it doesn’t feature screenshots of SSMS 😉). I think six in 2023 is achievable. And next year, I can try to outdo that… as well as moving country!
Outwith is probably my favourite word that I’ve learned from my time in Scotland & I will definitely be taking it with me when I go!
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