It’s been 2016 for over a month now, so hopefully you are still not changing your 5 into a 6 still. Chances are you haven’t changed your software to reflect the new year yet. Office 2016 came out in September of 2015 and SQL Server 2016 hasn’t been released yet. It’s hard to keep up with all of the version changes that have come out, especially when you throw in Power BI which is has something new every month. If you know you are going to be upgrading to one or both of these versions, or want to learn more about SQL Server or Excel so you can decide if  is worth the upgrade effort, this week I might be able to help out. I am going to be talking about the 2016 version of SQL Server on Wednesday, February 10 at the Arizona SQL Server User Group meeting and then talk about the 2016 version of Excel on Thursday at the Excel BI SQL Pass Virtual Chapter. If you are not in Arizona right now, you are missing out as we are having Department of Tourism weather of 80 degrees. You can get back to me in August when I am melting in the 115 degree heat.

Polybase in SQL Server 2016

Since there are many new features to talk about in SQL Server 2016, I picked Polybase. As big data matures many places are looking to keep their structured data right where it is and create an HDFS cluster to store other data. Polybase allows SQL Server 2016 users to look at both all in one place.

Excel 2016

It’s been a while since September 22, 2015, the date Office 2016 was released , but I still know very few people who have upgraded. I’ve been to a few clients that hope to upgrade to Excel 2012 this year. In this session, I will show where things got moved and renamed, what’s new and what is on the deprecated list. If you don’t have 2016 installed yet, or if you do and wonder where Power Query went, please join me to hear all about it. Generally speaking, the Virtual Chapters are posted on Youtube, and when they are I will have a link available. Unfortunately for those who attended my last Excel BI Virtual Chapter Meeting, due to technical difficulties that recording is not available, but hopefully this time everything will work.  When the recording is available I will make sure a link it is available on my blog for those who can’t make it.

Yours Always

Ginger Grant

Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur