Same Logic, Different Engine: PySpark Through a SQL Lens

Spent a productive afternoon getting properly stuck into PySpark data transformations and pipeline management in Databricks.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

The commercial case for database modernisation: why hybrid often wins

There’s a habit among technology leaders of treating database modernisation as optional housekeeping — a technical tidy-up to defer until the next budget cycle.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

Newly Certified: Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate

I’m pleased to share that I’ve passed the Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate exam.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

The Passive Node That Wasn't: What Azure Arc ESU Billing Really Costs You

If you’re running SQL Server 2016 past its end-of-support date on 14 July 2026, Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc are probably on your radar.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

The Passive Node That Wasn't: What Azure Arc ESU Billing Really Costs You

If you’re running SQL Server 2016 past its end-of-support date on 14 July 2026, Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc are probably on your radar.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

The Passive Node That Wasn't: What Azure Arc ESU Billing Really Costs You

If you’re running SQL Server 2016 past its end-of-support date on 14 July 2026, Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc are probably on your radar.

mrneilbryan.substack.com

SQL Server Audit Tables: Knowing Who Changed What, and When

Audit tables in SQL Server: the unglamorous feature that saves your weekend

mrneilbryan.substack.com

Recommendation Engines in Pure T-SQL: A Look at SQL Server Graph Tables

Most people building product recommendations reach for a graph database like Neo4j, or start wiring up a separate service.

open.substack.com

The Death of the Middleman: Why Real-Time Mirroring is Rewriting the Data Architecture Playbook

For years, enterprise data engineering has been stuck in a familiar, slightly frustrating loop: Extract, Transform, Load.

open.substack.com

Passing the AB-900: What I Learned About Governing AI in Microsoft 365

I am officially Microsoft Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals (AB-900) Passed!

open.substack.com

Getting Started with Microsoft Fabric: How to Activate Your Free 60-Day Trial

I get asked about this fairly regularly, so I thought I’d write it up properly.

open.substack.com

Deep Dive: Handling SQL Server CDC Schema Evolution with T-SQL

One of the trickier challenges in data engineering is evolving your database schema without pulling the rug out from under your downstream ETL or ELT pipelines.

open.substack.com

The Arc Inversion: What Nobody Tells You Before You Deploy Azure Arc

If you’re managing a large on-premises SQL Server estate, you’ve probably sat in that meeting.

open.substack.com

The Results Are In: What a Governance Gate Actually Saved on SQL Server AI Workloads

90% fewer tokens on the second run, a 0.03 quality cost — and one of my own assumptions didn’t survive contact with the data.Thanks for reading!

open.substack.com

Most AI Cost Problems Aren’t Model Problems. They’re Governance Problems.

I built a controlled experiment inside SQL Server 2025 to prove it — and the whole thing runs in T-SQL.

open.substack.com

From ClickOps to Cloud Engineering: Why I’m Trading the Portal for ARM and Bicep

In the world of cloud computing, we’ve all been there: clicking through the Azure Portal to spin up a new resource.

open.substack.com

Bringing AI Sentiment Analysis Directly into SQL Server

There’s a tendency in our world to treat AI and databases as separate concerns — the database stores the data, something else does the clever stuff with it.

substack.com

The Power of a "Tiny Experiment": Getting Visibility on SQL Backups

We all know the advice: start small.

open.substack.com