T-SQL Tuesday #181 – First ever T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar crossover

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This month I have the pleasure of hosting the invite for T-SQL Tuesday, which is the first ever T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar crossover.

So that people from different communities can unite in their contributions and get introduced to each other. Especially those who are active in either the Azure or Microsoft Data Platform communities.

Plus, it is a great way for some of you to get your material amplified to a fresh audience.

I am a regular contributor to both T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar. Which is why I am really excited to host this ambitious crossover.

Before I go any further, a special thanks to Gregor Suttie (l), Richard Hooper (l) and Steve Jones (l) for giving me permission to do this and allowing me to bring people from different communities together.

I will quickly cover about both T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar before I cover the topic for this month’s invite. If you already know about both feel free to scroll down to the invite.

About T-SQL Tuesday and the Festive Tech Calendar

Below is a brief explanation of both T-SQL Tuesday and the Festive Tech Calendar. For the benefit of those in different communities.

About T-SQL Tuesday

Here is the short version of what T-SQL Tuesday entails:

1. On the first Tuesday of the month somebody publishes a post inviting others to write a post about a topic.
2. On the following Tuesday everybody publishes their blog posts in response to the invite. Following a standard set of the rules for the post that are stated in the invite (more about that below).
3. After all the posts have been published the host publishes a round-up of all the posts.

Sometimes there’s flexibility in the rules. For example, when I hosted T-SQL Tuesday 118 Bert Wagner produced a video to go along with his blog post. You are more than welcome to do the same this time around.

In addition, you are more than welcome to view my T-SQL 180 contribution to see how a contribution tends to look.

About Festive Tech Calendar

Festive Tech Calendar is an event that is put together every year by various members of the technical community.

Basically, people submit sessions beforehand. Afterwards, the selected sessions are released during December. Similar to the style of an advent calendar.

All of the contributions are done by members of the community in their own time and viewing all the contributions are free. However, over the years the Festive Tech Calendar has selected a charity that they encourage everybody to donate to since .

This year, the selected charity is Beatson Cancer Charity. You can donate through the JustGiving page created by the Festive Tech Calendar team.

Typically, I make a video for Festive Tech Calendar. For example, last year I made a Microsoft Fabric video whilst sporting the below sweater.

In fact, this is the first time my contribution is a blog post.

Now for the invitation

Even though traditionally T-SQL Tuesday is SQL Server related, I want to include as many people from the different Microsoft communities as possible.

Therefore, I have opened up the scope a bit this time around so that people in various communities can contribute. However, it still has a Microsoft Data Platform theme. So here it is.

My invitation to yourselves is to write about a Microsoft Data Platform announcement that you considered to be as amazing as a present. In other words, something which made you go “wow”.

You can write about anything Microsoft Data Platform related that made you feel that way. Below are some ideas:

• Dark mode in Power BI.
• Azure SQL Managed instances.
• Availability of SQL Server on Linux.
• Linux-Based Azure Cosmos DB emulators.
• SQL Server Filtered or Columnstore indexes.
• One of the many Copilot experiences introduced.
• Microsoft Fabric (left this until the end on purpose)

I opted for a present theme this time around. Since it is the holiday period for a lot of people this time of year. This post can be open to interpretation, as long as it is something Microsoft Data Platform related.

However, I will give preference to ordering in my round up to those who publish about something vaguely related to SQL Server. To give people an incentive to choose something as closely related to SQL Server as possible.

T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech crossover rules

We typically have rules for each T-SQL Tuesday and this month is no exception. However, I have tweaked them especially for this crossover:

• Your post must be published one week after this invitation is published on Tuesday 10th December. This counts if it is still Tuesday anywhere in the world.
• You must include either the combined image at the start of this post that represents both T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar or the T-SQL Tuesday logo below.
  You can choose whichever image works best for you post, however you must make the image link back to this invitation post.
• Ping backs should work, but for certainty add a comment to this post with a link to your own. So that I know where to find your post.
• Provide a status update online about your post using both the #tsql2sday and #FestiveTechCalendar hashtags. Through whichever social media platforms that you wish.

Optional but preferred: Add a link to the JustGiving page created by the Festive Tech Calendar team.

Below is the T-SQL Tuesday logo below in case that works better for your blog post.

Final words

I have been extremely excited about hosting the first ever T-SQL Tuesday and Festive Tech Calendar crossover for some time now.

Even more so since I came up with the invitation topic some time ago. Which is why I am looking forward to seeing some amazing contributions this month.

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