62 - Data of all shapes & sizes with Gail Shaw

We talk to Gail Shaw about data, in all its shapes and sizes. Gail is a 10 year Microsoft MVP, and has tamed many a database in her career and shares some great insights with us.

Chantal, Kenneth & Len talk data with Gail Shaw. From Gail's first 8086 PC, dual majoring in physics & computer science and printed Oracle error codes we join Gail on her journey into the realm SQL Server and how she's conquered it.

We get some advice for squeezing a little more performance out of your production database, which might be more obvious than you'd think!

Ever wondered about SQL Server on Linux? Gail has some great insights as to why Microsoft might gone down that route. We all take stock of Microsoft's great recent contributions to the open-source, and the efforts to liberate their tools from their operating systems.

We venture into the world of big data, cautiously, while clarifying some terms and distinguishing big data from just "a lot of data". Thinking of big data in terms of analytics help focus the discussions and breaks big data up into layers. The consequences of incorrect medical diagnostics even came up!

Find and follow Gail online

• https://twitter.com/SQLintheWild
• http://sqlinthewild.co.za/

We mention some recorded talks by Gail.

• https://sqlbits.com/Sessions/Event14/All_about_Indexes
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bl9dArtmA

Here are some resources mentioned in the show:

• Intel 8086 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086
• Modula-2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
• Microsoft Access - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access
• MSSQL Server on Linux in Docker - https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/mssql-server-linux/
• 3V's of Big Data - http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/3Vs
• Data lake - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_lake
• Python - http://python.org
• R - https://www.r-project.org/
• The Iris dataset - http://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/datasets/plot_iris_dataset.html
• PASS Summit - http://www.pass.org/
• Microsoft Cognitive Services - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/
• Decision trees - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree
• Boosted Decision Tree - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn905801.aspx
• Predictive Analytics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_analytics
• Prescriptive Analytics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive_analytics
• Cortana Intelligence - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/cortana-intelligence

Picks

• Gail
  • Kaggle
  • Microsoft Research
• Len
  • TensorFlow
• Chantal
  • Boomerang for Gmail
• Kenneth
  • Theory of Everything

Thanks for listening!

See all past picks on our picks page.

Shining a spotlight on the amazing and inspiring women in our community.