The John Barker Mentoring Project

John Barker retired from the US Air Force in or around 1975. He returned home to rural Blackstone Virginia, in part to help care for his aging parents. He had experience in electronics as a technician and built a Southwest Technical Products M6800 computer kit. Although I’m not sure this is an accurate image of …
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The Space Between

It happened again this weekend. After delivering my presentation titled “Moving Data with Azure Data Factory,” at SQL Saturday – Raleigh (which was awesome, by the way!) – one of the handful who stood because the seats were filled (I am humbled) approached and said, “I read your blog. How do you find time to …
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In the Beginning…

As I stated in the post titled Writing a Technical Book, “I am often asked for more information about writing a technical book.” In a follow-up post titled, One Way to Write a Technical Book, I state, [here] “I share details of my approach to writing a technical book.” People reading these posts have asked …
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Biml, Book Reviews, and Metadata-Driven Frameworks

I occasionally (rarely) read reviews at Amazon of books I’ve written. If I learn of a complaint regarding the book I often try to help. If a reader experiences difficulty with demos, I often offer to help, and sometimes I meet with readers to work through some difficulty related to the book (as I offered …
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Introducing Azure Data Factory Design Patterns

I was honored to write an article titled Introducing Azure Data Factory Design Patterns featured in this month’s PASS Insights newsletter! Introducing Azure Data Factory Design Patterns The article covers a couple execution patterns: Execute Child Pipeline Execute Child SSIS Package I demonstrate a cool SSIS Catalog Browser feature that helps ADF developers configure the Execute SSIS Package activity. To …
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One Way to Write a Technical Book

In my previous post titled Writing a Technical Book, I discussed phases of the process of writing a technical book. In this post I share details of my approach to writing a technical book. Review To summarize, the steps for writing a technical book are: Idea Proposal Contract Writing Editing Typesetting Publication How I Write …
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Writing a Technical Book

I am often asked for more information about writing a technical book. As author or co-author of twelve books focused or touching on technology, I consider myself experienced – not an expert. I’ve noticed “ah-ha” moments recently when sharing insights and advice, so I thought I’d write a post about it. I hope that’s ok. …
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