I find inspiration, solutions and ideas from blog posts and videos that the data, and wider tech community have taken the time to create and share. So I’m starting this weekly post to highlight the great content I come across each week as I learn new things, fix problems and write my own posts sharing the things I’ve worked on.
Here’s what I’ve been reading and watching this week:
Calling a REST API from PowerShell#
by Barbara Forbes
Barbara goes into a ton of detail on what a REST API is, all of its component parts and how you can use PowerShell to call it. Not only that but she has put together a demo API that you can try out for yourself (for as long as it’s still up). This is a great foundation article for getting started with REST API’s in PowerShell. Check it out.
https://4bes.nl/2020/08/23/calling-a-rest-api-from-powershell/
The Ultimate Jigsaw - Architecting Azure Synapse Analytics#
by Heini Ilmarinen
Heini presented at the New Stars of Data conference earlier this month, a conference dedicated to mentoring and showcasing new speakers in the community. I missed the start of her session so it was great to go back and watch the recording.
It was a fantastic session covering how Azure Synapse Analytics fits into your data platform. Heini goes into detail on securing Synapse and a good dive into the internal components. It’s a great introduction and well worth a watch! You can also find all the other sessions from the conference on the New Stars of Data YouTube playlist. I hope to see Heini presenting again in the near future!
Using Azure DevOps CI CD to Deploy Azure Data Factory Environments#
by Ron L’Esteve
Ron has put together a great step-by-step guide to setting up a CI/CD pipeline for Azure Data Factory using Azure DevOps over on MS SQL Tips. I’ve been looking into all the options lately and this is an alternative to Microsoft’s method of using the adf_Publish ARM templates by using the Azure.DataFactory.Tools created by fellow MVP, Kamil Nowinski. If you have a preferred method or an third alternative I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Binging with Babish - Meat Tornado#
This last one is a little off-topic but this is a youtube channel I hold dear. Andrew Rea (Babish) recreates dishes from TV shows and movies. There’s lots of fantastic and fun recipes from a great presenter. I cannot recommend the nachos enough!
Feedback#
I want to share these great posts with people in the best way possible so if you have any suggestions for tags, delivery format or better ways to find this kind of content, get in touch in the comments below.
Craig