Workflows of Highly Functional App & Data Engineering Teams

How does a highly functional development team manage enterprise data engineering? They focus on the core principles of Schema Management, Standards Enforcement, Database Testing, and Automated Incremental Deployment. Microsoft brings an agonizing menu of choices to architects and engineers; they can be a challenge to wade through. This session can help. Let’s review how some of the world’s largest and most critical app & data engineering teams handle change management, observability, and quality at enterprise scale.

Goals: • Understand how enterprise teams manage schema control, including versioning, migrations, and updates, to ensure data consistency across all environments. • Explore how enterprise teams ensure engineering quality through automated testing, code reviews, and standards enforcement. • Learn how enterprise teams automate reliable delivery through continuous integration and deployment, reducing errors and improving efficiency.

Teaching Data Patterns In-Person and At-Scale

The evolution of Data Engineering tool can meet educators where they are, enabling robust student experiences with automated environments, cross-platform parities, and rich, friendly tooling that helps learners engage with real-world data engineering. Let's walk through recent innovations and practical strategies to prepare, support, and assess database classrooms.

SQL & .NET: Three Ways to Build the Same Data-Driven App

This workshop explores the three mainstream approaches .NET developers and architects use to design and build modern, data-driven applications. The use cases are intentionally simple, allowing us to focus on the tooling and technology, the patterns, and the code. By the end, you'll have practical, real-world examples of how to build the same app in different ways, along with code you can take home and reference throughout the year. This isn’t about promising the world—it’s about equipping you with exposure to tips, tricks, and proven techniques regular developers actually use.

Build an Enterprise Data API, then take the rest of the day off.

Data owners are exposing more and more data through Data API endpoints. The business result is interoperability, but the engineering result is a growing list of requirements like performance, scalability, observability, caching, and security—all of which bloat the codebase with resolvers, controllers, repository code, unit tests, and a slower CI/CD pipeline. What if there was a better way? Microsoft’s Data API builder is an open-source Data API engine that runs in a stateless container. It delivers GraphQL and REST endpoints over Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, and MySQL with all the industry-standard security and endpoint features, but none of the extra code. It integrates with any architecture and doesn’t require your team to adopt any particular language or framework. Be the 10x developer by focusing on code that brings real business value, not just CRUD operations. Make Data API endpoints a no-compromise commodity with Data API builder over Azure SQL.

A Little Cache Goes a Long Way

Give me one second, I will save you hours

Modern Architecture 101 for New Engineers & Forgetful Architects

I've been a Microsoft field engineer for fourteen years—learn from my experience and mistakes. Today’s landscape of architectural choices for enterprise solutions is vast, with real problems to solve and real issues that come with those solutions. Big enterprises or small, problems are problems. There are plenty of tools and frameworks, but what really sets enterprise solutions apart from one-off applications are the fundamental patterns. In this session, we’ll break down a typical enterprise architecture piece by piece, focusing on the decisions engineers and architects make when tackling common problems and requirements. We’ll dive into areas like scalability, security, integration, and maintainability, giving you practical insights whether you’re new to the field or just need a refresher.

This is theory. Come ready to absorb a lot of important information.

Get Started with .NET Aspire with a Database

This introductory session is for developers ready to explore .NET Aspire with SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. Build foundational knowledge & gain practical insights to adopt new patterns. We'll also look at how the Community Toolkit can enhance .NET Aspire projects with prebuilt solutions.

A Developer's Guide to Database Patterns

If you think of the database as a pain in the neck, you're not alone. But with some engineering rigor, you can level up your database game. This critical component of your architecture can benefit from the same practices as code — source control gates, unit testing, CI/CD automation, linting, quality measurements, and abstract repositories. In this session, learn the engineering best practices used by development teams whose databases aren't a pain in the neck. This session is a collection of patterns recently curated from many of Microsoft's largest and most demanding customers.

How Microsoft's new, open-source Data API builder fits into Solution Architecture

Software Architects choose tools and patterns with an eye toward cost, time, shelf-life, and standard features. Data API builder is not source generation — it's Microsoft's free Data API engine that exposes secure REST & GraphQL endpoints over SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, and Azure Cosmos DB, whether in Azure, on-premises, or even in AWS or GCP. In this session, we'll discuss security & architecture options, and when to use GraphQL versus REST endpoints.

Not your Father's SQL Server: Developer Innovations in Data Storage

There have been so many innovations in recent years, it's easy to have missed them. Together, though, they've lifted SQL to be a modern, multi-modal database for Machine Learning, JSON Documents, Polybase, Geospatial, Temporal & Graph data stores. Let's take another look at database features targeting developer productivity and unlocking new solutions.