Festive Tech Calendar 2022 contribution

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My Festive Tech Calendar 2022 contribution was released this week. It is a video available on YouTube called “Viewing a list of Christmas presents from Azure Data Engineering services“.

Which shows how can query Christmas presents which are stored in csv or parquet files using Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics. Plus, I cover Delta Lakes.

In previous years I have published a post that contains an overview about the contents of the video. For example, last years post that accompanied the video.

However, this year I decided to encourage you all to watch the video instead. So that I can cover some key points relating to the video and this years Festive Tech Calendar in this post.

You can watch the video by clicking on the name of the video above or clicking on the image below.

Important Festive Tech Calendar 2022 points

I want to highlight the fact that this years Festive Tech Calendar is raising money for Missing People. Who find vulnerable missing people and help reunite families.

A lot of us community professionals are dedicating our own time to put all the fantastic content coming out this month. You can view the schedule towards the bottom of the Festive Tech Calendar page.

I think everybody involved would appreciate it if you donated to this great cause. Which you can do by going to the Festive Tech Calendar JustGiving page.

Another key point I want to highlight this year is that you can win some great prizes. Including an Elgato Stream Deck and a Festive Lego set. You can read more about how to win in detail on the Festive Tech Calendar supporters page.

I suspect I am not eligible to win one of them due to my new employer, so good luck to everybody else who enters.

Finally, a big thanks to everybody involved in this years Festive Tech Calendar. Including the organizers and all the people contributing towards such a large amount of content.

Festive Tech Calendar 2022 video points

As mentioned earlier, in the video I show different ways to query the csv and parquet files using Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics.

I decided to do all the Azure Databricks demos in the ‘Data Science & Engineering’ persona in the Databricks workspace. In reality, I could have also shown the Databricks SQL capabilities but decided this was a more balanced approach.

Plus, even though I show some Python code I decided to base a lot of the demos on the SQL language. Due to the fact that I suspect that a lot of people watching the video have a SQL related background.

In Azure Synapse Analytics I focus more on the serverless SQL Pool capabilities. I do still show how to work with Spark clusters as well. However, to keep the video relevant I decided not to repeat going through similar code.

Due to its festive theme, the video includes a naughty list. One thing I want to make clear is that any names you see in this post are purely fictional. Because I would not reveal the real contents of Santa’s lists.

In fact, all the data in the files were created using public datasets that are available on Kaggle.

Personal note

On a more personal note, I glad I got to do this video even though it has been a busy time for me recently. For various reasons, including PASS Data Community Summit and making a few videos for the community.

Which includes this video for Festive Tech Calendar and another one for last months edition of the Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft MVP series. Where I showed how to perform CI/CD for serverless SQL Pools.

There is also a third video coming, but I will keep you all in suspense about that one until next year.

One reason this video is different from previous ones is due to the fact that it the first one where I mention Avanade Netherlands as my new employer. Since I started with them at the start of the month.

Final words

I hope those who watch my Festive Tech Calendar 2022 contribution this year enjoy it. Plus, the rest of the great content made available this month.

Please, if you have enjoyed any of the Festive Tech Calendar content donate to though the Festive Tech Calendar JustGiving page.

Of course, if you have any comments or queries about this post feel free to reach out to me.