Most Active Speaker

Leonard Lobel

Leonard Lobel

CTO, Sleek Technologies, Inc.

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Leonard Lobel (Microsoft MVP, Data Platform) is the chief technology officer and co-founder of Sleek Technologies, Inc., a New York-based development shop with an early adopter philosophy toward new technologies. He is also a Microsoft consultant at Ernst & Young.

Programming since 1979, Lenni specializes in Microsoft-based solutions, with experience that spans a variety of business domains, including publishing, financial, wholesale/retail, health care, and e-commerce. Lenni has served as chief architect and lead developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant, trainer, and frequent speaker at local usergroup meetings, VSLive, SQL Bits, and other industry conferences.

Lenni has also authored several MS Press books and Pluralsight courses on SQL Server and Azure Cosmos DB programming.

Awards

  • Most Active Speaker 2023

Developer Dive into SQL Server 2022

This full-day workshop will get you up to speed on powerful new features in SQL Server 2022. Lenni will pull no punches as he rips through the most important SQL Server features for developers in this intensive demo-packed tour.

We'll kick things off with the broad multi-platform support across Windows, Linux, and Docker. Learn how SQL Server’s ability to run inside Linux containers on both Windows and Mac will revolutionize the way you work with Microsoft’s venerable database engine. Then you'll explore the Intelligent Query Processing (IQP) features, which deliver groundbreaking performance improvements to the query engine. We’ll then move on to the latest development platform improvements, including T-SQL enhancements added in SQL Server 2022, machine learning services with R and Python, integrated JSON support, stretch database, and temporal tables.

Next we’ll explore security features, starting with ledger tables. With ledger, SQL Server 2022 utilizes blockchain technology that hashes every transaction, and guarantees that none of your data has been tampered with. Next, we’ll examine dynamic data masking and row-level security. We’ll then dig into Always Encrypted and demonstrate SQL Server 2019’s support for secure enclaves that enables rich query of encrypted data in use. We’ll wrap up with the latest PolyBase enhancements to query external data in Azure Blob Storage, Cosmos DB, Oracle, and other remote data sources.

Securing Azure Cosmos DB

Every database needs to be secured, and Azure Cosmos DB provides enterprise-class security features to make certain that all your data is fully protected. In this session, you’ll learn how to setup network security – the first line of defense against any unauthorized access. We’ll cover the IP firewall and VNet access using service endpoints, plus how to enable private endpoints for a solution that’s completely isolated from the public internet. We’ll then move on to authentication options using master keys, resource tokens, and Azure Active Directory integration. Finally, we’ll look at built-in server-side encryption using Microsoft managed keys and customer managed keys, plus client-side encryption which ensures that highly sensitive data is always encrypted, and accessible only through applications that you approve. Attend this session and arm yourself with the skills you need to secure your database in Azure Cosmos DB!

What’s New for Developers in SQL Server 2022

SQL Server 2022 adds powerful features that you’ll learn about in this demo-packed session, started with ledger tables. With ledger, SQL Server 2022 utilizes blockchain technology that hashes every transaction, and guarantees that none of your data has been tampered with. We’ll also cover granular DDM (dynamic data masking) permissions and T-SQL enhancements all coming your way with SQL Server 2022. Attend this session and get ready for SQL Server 2022 today!

Creating REST and GraphQL Database Endpoints with Data API Builder

How would you like to create a fully functional REST or GraphQL API right over your database? With the brand new Data API Builder, it's virtually effortless to expose your database as REST or GraphQL endpoints for CRUD operations and stored procedure calls, complete with filtering, sorting, and pagination. This new capability supports not only tables, views, and/or stored procedures in relational databases (SQL Server, Azure SQL, or MySQL), but also non-relational (NoSQL) data containers in Azure Cosmos DB. Authentication with OAuth2/JWT, role-based authorization, and item-level security are all fully supported as well. Attend this session and learn how the Data API Builder can help you design more capable and robust capabilities in your next database application.

Developer Dive into Azure Cosmos DB

This workshop covers everything data professionals need to know about Azure Cosmos DB, and how to integrate Microsoft’s massively scalable, globally distributed, multi-model database service in modern web and mobile applications.

The journey begins by locking down the most critical concepts; core capabilities built into Cosmos DB, which include provisioned throughput, horizontal partitioning, and global distribution. Then we examine all the many other facets of Cosmos DB that you need to understand to exploit all the features that the service provides. This includes data modeling, denormalization, migration using Azure Data Factory, querying JSON with SQL, C# programming with the .NET SDK, microservices using the change feed, and the server-side programming model that supports transactional stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions.

Finally, we cover management, including monitoring and troubleshooting, backup and restore, and security with network-level access control, authentication and authorization, Azure Active Directory integration, and encryption features. So join me to learn all about Azure Cosmos DB, and get ready to build your next generation of database applications for the cloud.

Confidential Computing with SQL Server Always Encrypted and Secure Enclaves

Always Encrypted (introduced in SQL Server 2016) uses client-side encryption ensuring that data is encrypted both in flight and at rest. The encryption relies on keys that are never exposed to SQL Server, which means you can deploy your encrypted database to the cloud without the keys, which are shared only with trusted clients.

SQL Server 2019 (and most recently, Azure SQL Database) takes this technology to the next level, and provides dramatic new capabilities for you to work with encrypted data. This includes rich computation, pattern matching, and range operations over encrypted data. Attend this session and learn how to leverage secure enclaves (based on either hardware or Windows Hyper-V), with Always Encrypted in SQL Server 2019 and Azure SQL Database, so that data also remains encrypted “in use.”

Developer Dive into Azure Cosmos DB

This full day workshop will ramp you up quickly on Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft’s globally distributed, massively scalable, low (single-digit millisecond) latency, fully managed NoSQL database service designed specifically for modern web and mobile applications. Like other NoSQL platforms, Cosmos DB supports a schema-free data model, built-in partitioning for sustained heavy-write ingestion, and replication for high availability. But only Cosmos DB offers turnkey global distribution, automatic indexing, and SLAs for guarantees on 99.999% availability, throughput, latency, and consistency.

For many newcomers to Cosmos DB, the learning process starts with data modeling and partitioning. How should you structure your model? When should you combine multiple entity types in a single container? Should you de-normalize your entities? What’s the best partition key for your data? So we start off with the key strategies for modeling and partitioning data effectively in Cosmos DB. Using a real-world NoSQL example based on the AdventureWorks relational database, we explore key Cosmos DB concepts—request units (RUs), partitioning, and data modeling—and how their understanding guides the path to an optimal data model that yields the best performance and scalability.

Throughout the day, we tour the many features of Cosmos DB, including its multi-model capabilities which allow you to store and query schema-free JSON documents (using either SQL or MongoDB APIs), graphs (Gremlin API), and key/value entities (table API), and columnar (Cassandra API). You’ll learn about global distribution, multi-region conflict resolution, scale-out partitioning, tunable consistency, custom indexing, and more.

You’ll also learn client development, starting with the .NET SDK as we build a Cosmos DB application from scratch in C#. Then you’ll see how to work with your data using interactive Jupyter notebooks and Python. You’ll also learn how to migrate data from SQL Server to Cosmos DB with Azure Data Factory, how to query Cosmos DB using SQL, and how to write data access code that creates and queries databases, containers, and documents. We’ll also create, deploy, and execute server-side stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions, using the Cosmos DB JavaScript server-side programming model. Attend this workshop, and get yourself ready for Cosmos DB!

Data Modeling and Partitioning Patterns in Azure Cosmos DB

For many newcomers to Cosmos DB, the learning process starts with data modeling and partitioning. How should you structure your model? When should you combine multiple entity types in a single container? Should you de-normalize your entities? What’s the best partition key for your data?

In this session, we discuss the key strategies for modeling and partitioning data effectively in Cosmos DB. Using a real-world NoSQL example based on the AdventureWorks relational database, we explore key Cosmos DB concepts—request units (RUs), partitioning, and data modeling—and how their understanding guides the path to a data model that yields the best performance and scalability. Attend this session, and acquire the critical skills you’ll need to design the optimal database for Cosmos DB.

Building Event-Driven Microservices with the Azure Cosmos DB Change Feed

The change feed in Azure Cosmos DB is one of the most overlooked features of Microsoft’s globally distributed, massively scalable, multi-model database service. Similar to the transaction log of a relational database, the change feed gives you a continuous record of changes as they occur. It therefore serves as an excellent event source for a wide range of cloud-based microservices. In this demo-filled session aimed at developers and data professionals alike, you’ll learn how to leverage the change feed and build event-driven microservices with Azure Functions to achieve replication, denormalization, notifications, materialized views, and data archival.

Docker for the SQL Server Developer

Containerization is a hot topic these days, and SQL Server’s ability to run inside containers on both Windows and Mac has revolutionized the way developers work with Microsoft’s venerable database engine. This dynamic session starts with a quick introduction to Docker and how it utilizes OS virtualization in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 to provide isolation across multiple containers running on your machine. Then you’ll see how fast and easy it is to spin up any number of SQL Server instances to run in both Windows and Linux containers simultaneously. Get bit by the Docker bug, and you’ll never go through the pain of installing SQL Server on your development machine ever again!

Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB

This session presents a broad overview of Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft’s globally distributed, massively scalable, low (single-digit millisecond) latency, fully managed NoSQL database service designed specifically for modern web and mobile applications. Like other NoSQL platforms, Cosmos DB supports a schema-free data model, built-in partitioning for sustained heavy-write ingestion, and replication for high availability. But only Cosmos DB offers turnkey global distribution, automatic indexing, and SLAs for guarantees on 99.999% availability, throughput, latency, and consistency.

We begin by explaining NoSQL databases in general, and how they compare with traditional relational database platforms. Then we tour the many features of Cosmos DB, including its multi-model capabilities which allow you to store and query schema-free JSON documents (using either SQL or MongoDB APIs), graphs (Gremlin API), and key/value entities (table API). You’ll learn about global distribution, scale-out partitioning, tunable consistency, custom indexing, and more. Attend this session and get up to speed on Cosmos DB today!

JSON Integration in SQL Server

For a long time now, the XML support in SQL Server has enabled developers to integrate structured relational data with unstructured hierarchical XML. Today, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is the new XML, and SQL Server provides built-in support for storing, querying, parsing, and manipulating JSON. In this session, you’ll learn the best use cases for leveraging JSON in SQL Server, and then explore different techniques for working with JSON. Whether you’re consuming it into relational tables, delivering it out of query results, or any combination of the two, JSON support in SQL Server provides the flexibility you need to get your job done.

Database Development with SQL Server Data Tools

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a powerful integrated development environment for designing, testing, and deploying SQL Server databases — whether you’re working locally or remotely, connected or offline, or in the cloud on Microsoft Azure — all from right in-side of Visual Studio. While SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) continues to serve as the primary tool for database administrators, SSDT plugs in to Visual Studio as a special database project type designed specifically for the application developer.

In this session, Lenni describes the various difficulties that developers face, and demonstrates how SSDT can be used to remedy those pain points. You will learn how to use features such as code navigation, IntelliSense, and refactoring with your database model — indispensable tools traditionally available only for application development in Visual Studio. We’ll also cover the declarative model that allows you to design databases offline and under source control right from within solution in Visual Studio, as well as how to deploy to SQL Database on Microsoft Azure. Don’t miss out on this demo-centric information-packed session on the current generation of database tools for application developers!

Graph DB – From SQL to Cosmos

Relational databases are great at relationships, right? Think again. In fact, things de-grade quickly once you need to work with and analyze many interconnected entities in a traditional relational model. At that point, you really need a graph database. Attend this demo-centric session and learn how the graph support included in SQL Server lets you embrace a graph data model without abandoning SQL Server and all of its rich native capabilities. Then we'll transition to Azure Cosmos DB and its Gremlin API to discover how similar capabilities exist in the NoSQL space with schema-free, globally distributed, big data graphs.

Leonard Lobel

CTO, Sleek Technologies, Inc.

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