With all the new stuff on the Microsoft Data Platform, it’s really hard to keep up with it all. I had announced my plans to charge down the DocumentDB road to try to get the basics of that in my head along with learning some JSON so I could get what all the hoopla is about.

However, after a lot of thought and some extensive meetings at Redgate, I’m looking to shift my learning in a new direction.

First up. Arrrrrrrrr!

No, it’s not yet “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” I’m going to start learning the R language. It’s a language for statistical computing and is one of the many underpinnings for what’s going to be happening with a lot of the Machine Learning capabilities in the Data Platform. With Azure SQL Database, and soon, SQL Server 2016, this new language is going to be part of the query landscape. It’s going to cause performance issues and all kinds of wonderful opportunities. I need to know it.

I’m also looking to embrace and extend my knowledge into the Machine Learning area. I’m not sure exactly where that’s going to take me, but again, I’m pretty sure we’re going to see more and more of this within the systems we manage.

With so much of the data stack now available through Azure (Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a game changer and you should be looking at that right now, in your spare time) changing not only what we can do, but how we do it, it’s affecting directly SQL Server. It’s not enough to know and understand just the core engine (it never really was, but we could tell ourselves that). This doesn’t just affect queries and query tuning. It has impact into our Data Lifecycle Management, DevOps and development releases and methods. In short, all the stack is getting impacted by the expanding Data Platform and I intend to be on top of it.

Watch for the R posts coming up, and forgive me if I occasionally sound a little piratical (OK, a little MORE piratical). Also, don’t worry. You’re still going to see stuff on query tuning, execution plans and all the core engine stuff. Fact is, that doesn’t go away just because I’m looking at Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Data Warehouse or attaching R to my T-SQL, because, under the covers, it’s still SQL Server.

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