Microsoft Data Platform MVPs Kendra Little, Steve Jones, Kathi Kellenberger and Grant Fritchey discuss the highlights of innovations they've seen in 2018, both in the Microsoft Data Platform and in Redgate's products. They discuss their favorite features, webcasts, and blog posts from around the internet as they review the year in tech innovations. Along the way they share their own personal moments of glory, and favorite goofy memories as well. Bring your own guesses for what's coming in the Data Platform in 2019, because they get predictive at the end of the discussion and tackle what cool things they hope to be surprised with in 2019.

1. 2018 Year in Review
…and Predictions for 2019

3. Redgate’s evangelist team
Kendra Little
@Kendra_Little
Evangelist
Grant Fritchey
@GFritchey
Evangelist
Kathi Kellenberger
@AuntKathi
Evangelist &
Simple Talk Editor
Steve Jones
@Way0utwest
Evangelist &
SQLServerCentral Editor

4. Agenda

5. 2018: Highs, Lows,
Moments of Oops & Glory

6. Grant’s moment of glory

7. Kendra’s moment of “Oops!”

8. What’s your favorite talk that you gave this year?

9. Did you attend any events in 2018 which you’d
highly recommend?

10. A Moment of Silence

11. DORA, Security, AI

12. What was your favorite Redgate solution to show
this year?

13. 2018 proved that naming things is still hard

14. SQL in the City: Highlights

15. SQL in the City: the hot mic incident

16. Favorite new Microsoft Data Platform features?

17. What features make you say…

18. 2019 Predictions
Art by @ChrisSpalton

19. Redgate Predictions

20. Data Platform Predictions

21. DevOps Predictions
Photo by Ash Edmonds on Unsplash

22. Bonus: The Best DevOps
Poem Ever Written

23. Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the place,
Not a server was stirring, ‘cept the database,
The DBAs sat in dim light, typing with care,
In hopes of how well the deployment would fare.
Their developers were nestled all snug in their beds,
Whilst visions of non-clustered indexes danced in their heads,
And low user traffic, connections, activity of all kind,
Gave the DBAs plenty of confidence in mind.
By Chris Unwin

24. When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter,
One DBA sprung from their chair to see what was the matter,
To SSMS they flew like a flash,
To find what had caused the poor DB to crash.
The gath’ring of multiple changes to make,
Had led to a rather ginormous mistake,
When what to their wond’ring eyes should appear through the smoke,
But several Stored Procs, which appeared to have broke,
By Chris Unwin

25. Dependencies thrown like caution to wind,
A deadline appeared, and none of them grinned,
Deadlocks and latches too were plaguing this night,
It seemed SQL Server was up for a fight.
They worked and they worked, all through the night,
Weary and exhausted, no one knew of their plight,
‘til ping went the inbox, and again and again,
It seemed also users were feeling the pain.
By Chris Unwin

26. “That’s it”, said one DBA, who had had quite enough,
“I gave up cookies and warm milk, to have it THIS rough!?”
So, with a face quite contorted by strain,
They started to roll-back, but that was also pain.
Trying to find who had changed what, when and why,
Had them verging on madness, and shouting out “why!?!”
But then, in a flash of red and green light,
A man in red coat had appeared from the night.
By Chris Unwin

27. “Ho Ho Ho” he bellowed, stomach jiggling along too,
“It seems at this point there’s just one thing to do!”
So with a flick of his wrist and a jingle of bells,
Santa highlighted the errors and all the code smells.
“You see poor DBAs, you needn’t be pained!”
“You just need to be agile, there’s much to be gained”
“Big Bang deployments are dangers you see”
“Like leaving for too long, the lights on your tree!”
By Chris Unwin

28. And like that, as if all’d been a dream,
The DBAs awoke away from their screen,
Twas Christmas once more and now they knew why,
In the new year perhaps, we should give DevOps a try.
By Chris Unwin

29. Check out “The Chrisses” on DBAle
https://www.red-gate.com/DBALE