The hype around Big Data began almost a decade ago – and, over the last four years or so, the excitement around machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) has joined it. But now the hype is settling down, and the technologies are becoming more relevant to Microsoft platform practitioners, as the tech increasingly makes its way into the Azure cloud platform and even into SQL Server.

In this workshop, we’ll explore the relevant Big Data and ML/AI technologies, and the services and platforms in which they surface. We’ll start with Big Data’s poster child, Apache Hadoop, which has been around on the Azure HDInsight service for years now. We’ll quickly move on to the Big Data and machine learning-savvy Apache Spark, which HDInsight on-boarded some time ago, and which Azure Databricks is built on exclusively. Then we’ll look at how to stay on-premises and work with SQL Server 2019’s implementation of Spark and elements of Hadoop, as well as the capabilities of SQL Server Machine Learning Services.

You’ll learn all about Big Data, machine learning, Hadoop and Spark – including the commonalities of using those technologies across HDInsight, Databricks, and SQL Server 2019, and the unique capabilities of them in each environment. You’ll also see how to use SQL Server ML services, on its own or in combination with Hadoop, Spark and other technologies. There’s no prior knowledge of Big Data, AI or ML required for this workshop – just a working knowledge of SQL Server or other databases, and a passion for learning the latest in data analytics and machine learning/AI.

You will learn:

• The fundamentals of Big Data and AI/machine learning
• The basics of Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark
• About leveraging newer tools like Visual Studio Code and Azure Data Studio, as well as Jupyter and Databricks notebooks, to get your analytics, AI and ML work done