Passed a CosmosDB Exam

Posted on March 30, 2022 by way0utwest

I took the beta exam for Cosmos DB a few months back. I did this as part of the MVP program, as they were asking people to evaluate the exam and give feedback. I’ve lightly used Cosmos DB, but I also thought I might get some practice with the platform and taking an MS test, which I haven’t done in years.

I passed!

I got a note today that the results for DP-420 were in. This is the Designing and Implementing Cloud-Native Applications Using Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB exam, which is way out of my area.

To be fair, I didn’t want to just take this blind, so I spent about a week and a half studying regularly each day, going through the learning path and understanding the different aspects of CosmosDB. It was interesting and confusing, but I acquired a decent understanding of what the platform is and can do.

What I didn’t know were some specifics like how many RU/s might be available for a particularly sized contained. I did, however, learn about the different types of containers, accounts, hierarchies of things, etc.

Feedback

I like the beta exams because you get more than the 5 minutes or so to give feedback, and can do so for many questions. While I think the exams do test some knowledge in most cases, I also think that they can mislead people at times. I also think that some questions are really fact memorization.

For example, if you asked me what is max size of a serverless container, that seems like a reasonable thing to know. If you’re planning an install, you should know that serverless limits things.

However, this is a memorization fact. It’s a documentation thing you can look up in seconds, and by the way, you should. That number could change any day as Cosmos DB evolves.

There were 2-3 questions like that on my exam and I gave that feedback. I don’t have a better question, but knowing that a container is 10GB or 50GB seems like a poor test of knowledge.

There were a few issues I had with wording, but overall the questions weren’t bad, IMHO. They were hard. Unlike many of the other SQL exams, I found most of these to be hard and was unsure of if I really knew the answer.

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My Favorite Data Platform Feature

Posted on March 30, 2022 by way0utwest

At SQL Bits a few weeks back there was a community keynote on Friday. Ben Weissman and Rob Sewell put this together as a fun way of involving others. They invited a number of people to each take 5 minutes and talk about their favorite part of the data platform, which encompasses a wide variety of technologies and products. There were a few people who chose Purview, Azure networking, and quite a few ways of using Power BI.

Me? I choose the Create button in Azure. Really, Azure itself because of the amazing array of things that you can deploy in minutes. It’s stunning to me to think back to the mid-2000s, when I first saw the Azure platform at TechEd and a Microsoft employee demo’d a key-value table, literally a two-column table. They were trying to sell this as a great way to deploy lookup data to mobile sales applications at scale. I was less than impressed.

This year I deployed a Synapse workspace in less than 10 minutes. Maybe less than 5. I know little about Synapse, and the idea of building a data warehouse and analytics platform, loading data, and running queries isn’t something I’d think I could do in 10 minutes, but I did it. I’ve found containers to be similarly useful in quickly getting something up and running, but even they require Docker or some other software installed and configured. In Azure, I can set things up in minutes.

In the last year I’ve set up numerable resources, from databases to web apps to a Kubernetes install. All in minutes, which is quicker than I could do something on my local system except for creating databases. If I had prepped things or had more knowledge that might not be the case, but the lack of needing to prep or learn a lot to get something set up is amazing in and of itself. This is especially true when I want to experiment with a technology or a new solution. I can quickly build an array of systems with much less effort than on-premises.

I don’t know how many of you use the cloud at work, but I find it amazing. It’s one part of the data platform from Microsoft that I really appreciate, especially as I’ve tried to work with MongoDB, Redis, and other technologies at home. The cloud makes things easier, even with databases.

Today, I’m wondering what your favorite part of the data platform might be. Is it something in SQL Server? Maybe a related technology? Perhaps something else that helps you work with data these days. Let us know what data platform thing is exciting to your career.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

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Daily Coping 30 Mar 2022

Posted on March 30, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to tune into your feelings without judging or trying to change them.

This is an interesting idea. I saw this in an essay from David Perell, with the idea that we want to experience negative feelings (anger, sadness, grief), but let them wash over us and move on. I have been trying to do this.

On the day I saw this tip, I was feeling upset, sad, angry, and more about some of the community issues I’ve seen recently. Some of these were from empathy for others, some were because I needed to deal with things.

However, I also needed to both move forward with my day, and work on how to work with the issues. I’m torn how I feel about the issues, about people, and what I should do. All of those things are valid. I am not trying to change the feelings, but just deal with them.

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Daily Coping 29 Mar 2022

Posted on March 29, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to notice what is going well, even when things are difficult.

Overall my life is amazing. The problems I have are just minor annoyances, really, and I try to remember that. I’m not always successful, but my wife helped me remember that recently.

We took a trip to see my daughter recently. This was a long weekend, leaving Thur, returning Monday. A snow storm was scheduled for Monday, so my wife was concerned and wanted us to change and come back Sunday. My daughter has been having a hard time and didn’t come home for Spring Break, so I wanted to see her, support her, and get some time.

All of this was on my mind when we boarded a plane for a 945a departure at 910, and more on my mind when the 12 of us that got on packed up and left at 915. There was some issue with the toilet being broken, so we needed a new plane.

Not the end of the world, and as I fly a lot, usually a couple times a year there’s some issue. In this case, we had to change gates and wait for a plane. It was scheduled to depart now around 1110. The plane didn’t arrive at the gate until about 1045, and after unloading and cleaning, we didn’t load until around 1130. We moved away from the gate, went to de-icing, and things were looking up. Slightly stressed as I had a 2 hour drive on the other end and wasn’t sure we’d get dinner with my girl, but that’s a minor issue.

We got to the runway and then turned around and returned to the gate. Some sort of brake issue. I like brakes on planes, so I took it in stride. A little stressed, but OK. At the gate, they announced this might take some time, so they let people get off. I’d been upgraded (again, my life is easy and amazing), so my wife drank mimosas while I read a bit. I tried to relax, but it was hard.

They announced it was a sensor, so they brought people back on. Then this wasn’t the sensor, so more mechanics, and people off the plane again. We stayed on again, more mimosas for me wife, but stress for me. At this point I was wondering if we’d leave. If we pushed to Friday and left Sunday, that would start to feel silly.

My wife reminded me that we were getting time together, whatever happened. We could find a way to go out another week or have my daughter come home. We didn’t have any big commitments, so I should relax.

I tried, and it was a good reminder that things were going well. I was in a first class seat. I could have a drink (I declined, citing my diet), and I was with my wife on a trip. I didn’t relax much, but I did at least see the good things.

We did manage to finally go, six hours late, and we arrived at the AirBNB at 1130. Too late for dinner, but we had a great weekend with my daughter, and we stayed through Monday. Everything worked out.

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