Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 343-344

Azure Infrastructure

In this daylong session, we’ll review all the various infrastructure components that make up the Microsoft Azure platform. When it comes to moving SQL Server systems into the Azure platform having a solid understanding of the Azure infrastructure will make migrations successful and making support solutions much easier.

Designing your Azure infrastructure properly from the beginning is extremely important. An improperly designed and configured infrastructure will provide performance problems, manageability problems, and can be difficult to resolve without downtime.

As Azure scales out around the work many more companies, no matter where they are located will begin by moving services from data centers into the Azure and a solid foundation is a key to successful migrations.

Wednesday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 345-346

Azure 101

Microsoft Azure is a daunting thing to look at and think about. In this session, we'll look at the basics of Azure, what the options are for setting up an Azure account; as well as look at how regions are broken down. We'll take a look at the differences between Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service as well as the High Availability and Disaster Recovery options that are available to do with these services. We'll finish the session off by looking at some options for Virtual Machines within Azure as well as the SQL Server offerings that are available on the platform.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 345-346

SQL and AI for the Rest of Us

Are you trying to keep up with the pace of AI today especially when it comes to working with your data in SQL, ground to cloud to fabric? In this session you will not only learn fundamentals like vectors, AI models, prompts, model hosting, and RAG. But you will also learn what are the latest innovations such as AI Agents, MCP Servers, and GitHub Copilots. We will have plenty of demos and we will show you how we built them using AI! You will walk away with a better sense of how you can use AI securely with your data in SQL.

Wednesday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 345-346

PaaSing on Lessons Learned: Database Migration Do’s and Don’ts

Migrating to Platform as a Service (PaaS) is not just a technical move—it’s an operational and architectural shift. In this session, Dan and Matt share real‑world PaaS migration experiences from both a Microsoft perspective and a consultant perspective. We’ll discuss what teams often underestimate, key decision points that shape outcomes, and lessons learned across planning, execution, and post‑migration operations. Attendees will leave with practical insight into how to approach PaaS migrations with realistic expectations and greater confidence.

Wednesday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 335-336

You Can't AI Your Way Out of Bad Data: A Practitioner's Blueprint for AI-Ready Data on Azure and SQL

Every organization wants to build AI-powered analytics. Most are discovering that AI doesn't fix bad data, it scales it. The real blocker isn't the model, the GPU, or the orchestration layer. It's the warehouse underneath.

In this session, Kevin Marshbank,Principal Consultant at The Data Vault Shop and a data warehouse architect with over 15 years building enterprise data environments, will walk through what it actually takes to structure a data environment that AI can work with. Drawing on hands-on implementations across Azure Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, and SQL Server, Kevin will break down the architectural decisions that determine whether your AI initiatives succeed or stall; regardless of the modeling methodology you've chosen.

This is not a session about picking the right data model. It's about the properties that any well-built warehouse must have to serve AI reliably: full historicity, traceable lineage, rich metadata, enforced governance, and semantic clarity. Kevin will show how these properties are achieved in practice, and why they're harder to retrofit than to build in from the start.

A central theme of the session is metadata, not as a documentation afterthought, but as the architectural connective tissue that makes AI workloads possible at scale. Kevin will cover how metadata-driven development approaches, which he applies in production using WhereScape's automation tooling on Azure, allow teams to generate pipelines, lineage, governance artifacts, and documentation from a single design layer, reducing manual coding by over 90% while producing the kind of governed, traceable data structures that AI systems actually need.

Attendees will walk away able to:

1. Audit their own data architecture against concrete AI-readiness criteria
2. Understand the metadata and governance gaps most likely to derail AI initiatives in production
3. Evaluate automation approaches that reduce manual development burden while building AI-ready structure into the warehouse from the ground up
4. Apply practical patterns Kevin has used across real Azure-based implementations to accelerate AI readiness without starting over

Wednesday 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM · Insight Studio

Accelerating Migration to Microsoft Fabric with MigrateFAST and Microsoft Funding Programs

Modernizing analytics platforms can be complex, costly, and time-consuming. In this 20-minute session, discover how MigrateFAST, MAQ Software’s Fabric migration accelerator, helps organizations accelerate their journey to Microsoft Fabric through an automation-first approach.

Through a customer case study and live demo, attendees will see how MigrateFAST streamlines migration across three critical modernization paths:

Data Integration – Modernizing ETL/ELT pipelines and data movement workloads

Analytics – Migrating data engineering, data science, and advanced analytics workloads

Reporting – Transitioning BI and reporting assets to a unified Fabric ecosystem

The session will highlight how organizations can reduce migration effort, improve accuracy, minimize risk, and accelerate time-to-value while adopting a scalable, future-ready data platform on Microsoft Fabric and leverage Microsoft funding programs to reduce migration costs.

Wednesday 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM · Collab Studio

Start with the Data Estate, Finish with a Unified Platform

Data challenges begin long before analytics or AI. A fragmented data estate spanning multiple databases, platforms, and technologies creates barriers to consistency, scalability, and trust. Learn how organizations address this challenge in two phases. First, by migrating and aligning their data estate to Azure, reducing fragmentation and improving manageability across SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and other environments. Second, by modernizing their data platform using Microsoft Fabric to unify data, streamline analytics, and improve reporting. Through real-world examples, we’ll discuss: • How to assess and modernize a diverse data estate • What changes once data is better aligned to Azure • Lessons learned from enterprise data estate modernization

Wednesday 3:50 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 345-346

Smarter Queries Start Here: Vector Search in SQL Server & Azure SQL DB

Microsoft SQL databases now support vector search and embeddings, enabling semantic queries that go beyond keywords. This session shows how to store, index, and query embeddings using familiar T-SQL. You’ll learn how to power smarter search, recommendations, and natural language interfaces—all within your database. Real-world examples will highlight practical use cases. If you're ready to level up your queries, this is where it starts.

Thursday 8:30 AM - 9:40 AM · Ballroom 2

Keynote: From Databases to Agents: Building the Data Foundation for the Agentic Enterprise

AI is redefining enterprise applications, and the organizations that lead this shift will be built on the strongest data foundations. Agents require transactional data, real-time context, persistent memory, analytics, governance, and enterprise-grade security across a unified platform. In this keynote, Shireesh Thota, CVP of Azure Databases, will walk you through how Microsoft is building the data foundation for the agentic enterprise. Azure SQL and Cosmos DB power operational intelligence, Azure Managed Redis provides low-latency memory and context, and Horizon DB delivers a cloud native managed PostgreSQL platform for modern applications. Microsoft Fabric unifies the enterprise data estate through OneLake, bringing together data, analytics, real time, and business intelligence all through a unified security and governance model and Rayfin accelerates intelligent application development with backend-as-a-service capabilities for data access, orchestration, and integration. Join us to learn how leading top Fortune 100 companies are turning their data into intelligence and building autonomous systems that reason, act, and drive business outcomes at scale.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 345-346

Advanced Data Protection Strategies with Azure SQL

Organizations handle increasing amounts of growth with their sensitive data. Data engineers must protect their data from external attackers, application users, and even privileged employees like database administrators.

This session will teach you how to protect your data while maintaining functionality and performance. You will leave this session knowing how and why column-level encryption, row-level security, and auditing are keys to securing your data.

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 345-346

Azure is the Best Cloud for SQL

Azure is the best cloud for SQL—and in this session, you’ll see why. We’ll walk through the practical reasons SQL professionals choose Azure SQL to migrate and modernize their SQL Server workloads, whether running on Azure VMs, Managed Instance, or Azure SQL Database. You’ll learn how to assess your environments, choose the right landing zone, and avoid common migration blockers. We’ll also showcase an end‑to‑end demo from assessment to migration to modernization, including integrating AI into your application using Azure SQL’s built‑in vector search and Agentic AI capabilities.

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 345-346

Ledger DBs and Tables for the DBA & Data Professional

With all the hype around blockchain, why should a DBA or other data professional care? In this session, we will cover the basics of blockchain as it applies to data and database processes:

• Immutability
• Verification
• Trust
• Ledger Tables
• Ledger Databases
• Confidential Computing and Storage

We will look at current offerings for blockchain features in Azure SQL DB/SQL Server. Finally, we'll help you identify the types of business requirements that need blockchain technologies.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 345-346

You Want To PaaS Up Your Database (Revised), Migrating To Azure SQL

Migrating your database into Azure can be a challenging task if you are not familiar with the available tools and options. In this document, I will share my field experience and help you choose the best solution for your database migration into an Azure SQL DB or Managed Instance. We will cover the following topics: • The tools that can help you assess, plan, and execute your migration: sqlpackage, Database Migration Assistant, and Azure Data Studio. • How to evaluate your database compatibility and performance in Azure and find the optimal service tier and configuration for your needs. • The migration options that you can use to move your data and schema into Azure and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

By the end of this session, you will have a clear understanding of how to migrate your database into Azure with confidence and ease.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 320-321

Selecting the Correct Azure Data Solution for Your Application

There are several different data platform solutions for use within your application. Selecting the right option can make the difference between a well-performing application and a poorly performing one; not to mention the cost aspect of choosing the wrong solution.

In this session we'll look at the options of Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, and Cosmos DB to see when these are all going to be the correct option, and when these aren't going to be the right option; both from a price and performance perspective.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 337-339

Batteries included: SQL DevOps with SQL projects

The evolution of SQL projects continues with expanded IDE support and deeper integration in the Fabric platform. Using the latest in VS Code and SSMS, we’ll walk through keeping our database in source control, integrating changes made in another database, and evaluating deployment plans. Finally, we'll automate CI/CD processes with REST APIs for SQL database in Fabric and the SqlPackage CLI.

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room 347-348

Backups Lie: Learning SQL Server Recovery Before It’s Too Late

Backups are only valuable if you know how to recover. This beginner‑friendly session focuses on the fundamentals of SQL Server recovery—what happens when things go wrong and how to get your data back with confidence. We’ll cover core backup types, what they actually enable during recovery, and the common gaps that leave teams unable to restore when it matters most. You’ll see how recovery differs across SQL Server running on‑premises, in virtual machines, and in Azure, including how IaaS approaches compare to Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance. Through simple demos and real‑world scenarios, you’ll learn how restores really work and how to choose the right recovery strategy before an outage forces the decision.