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NESQL thanks our annual sponsor, Centric Consulting, for their support The January meeting is sponsored by Blue Bridge People

A Practical Introduction to Vector Search in SQL Server 2025

Speaker: Andy Yun

Are you uncertain if SQL Server 2025 Vector Search has useful applications? Concerned that it is just more AI hype?

Then join me in this session, where I’ll break down how Vector Search works, where it fits into the AI landscape, and how you can use it today—on-prem and without changing your core architecture.

We’ll cover:

* The foundations of vector embeddings and similarity search * How SQL Server implements Vector Search, including indexing and querying * Code demos and practical use case exploration

You’ll leave armed with the knowledge to look beyond the hype and understand how Vector Search can work for you.

This session presents practical patterns for architecting secure, AI-ready frontends on AWS with Cognito-powered scalable auth. Topics include OIDC (auth code + PKCE), token/session hygiene, least-privilege IAM, and safely brokering AI endpoints via API Gateway/Lambda with rate limits, redaction, and cost guardrails. Attendees leave with a reference architecture, a hardening checklist, and a repeatable test strategy using Cypress Cloud.

Panel discussion on data, governance and deployment patterns in the Agentic AI stack.

Amazon Q Developer is getting better all the time, and you might be surprised at what it can do! In this session we’ll explore how developers, DevOps, and SysOps folks can use Amazon Q Developer to improve daily workflows and reduce the cognitive load of these high pressure roles. From writing and refining code, to testing, troubleshooting and even interacting with resources in your AWS account, Q can help drive efficiency every step of the way. Includes lots of demos and practical exercises that you can try for yourself.

Before you listen to this episode, can you quantify how useful you expect it to be? That's a prior! And "priors" is a word that gets used a lot in this discussion with Michael Kaminsky as we try to demystify the world of Bayesian statistics. Luckily, you can just listen to the episode once and then update your expectation—no need to simulate listening to the show a few thousand times or crunch any numbers whatsoever. The most important takeaway is that you'll know you've achieved Bayesian clarity when you come to realize that human beings are naturally Bayesian, and the underlying principles behind Bayesian statistics are inherently intuitive. This episode's Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is a brief explanation of statistical significance (and why shorthanding it is problematic…and why confidence intervals are generally more practically useful in business than p-values) from Michael Kaminsky! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

If you're at Identiverse D.C. next week or just near enough DC to make the trip, there is a tentative IdentiBeer pop-up meetup in the evening of Wednesday November 19th.

As venue isn't yet decided, it works a little like a secret speak-easy:

Either come to the Grand Ballroom area of the MGM National Harbor Hotel and find our IdentiBeer ambassador Jim McDonald, and/or follow the link below to register (so we know who to expect) and get updates right up until Wednesday evening. You can wear your conference badge if you are at the conference - bonus marks if you have an Identity at the Center sticker or an IDPro sticker!

And for those of you attending the Gartner IAM Summit in Grapevine a few weeks from now:

An IdentiBeer Gartner IAM edition is in planning for Monday Dec 8th! Follow the ~~white rabbit~~ meetup group to get more information!

As the world turns, a couple of things happen: 1) we grow and learn, and 2) the world changes. On this episode, inspired by a job interview question, the hosts walked through a range of thoughts and beliefs they had at one time that they no longer have today. Analytics intake forms are good…or bad? Analytics centers of excellence are the sign of a mature organization…or they're just one of many potential options? Privacy concerns are something no one really cares about…or they are something everyone cares deeply about? Voices were raised. Light profanity was employed. Laughter ensued. This episode's Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is a brief explanation of statistical significance (and why shorthanding it is problematic…and why confidence intervals are often more practically useful in business than p-values) from Michael Kaminsky. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Get up to speed on a new unified approach to building machine learning (ML) systems with a feature store. Using this practical book, data scientists and ML engineers will learn in detail how to develop and operate batch, real-time, and agentic ML systems. Author Jim Dowling introduces fundamental principles and practices for developing, testing, and operating ML and AI systems at scale. You'll see how any AI system can be decomposed into independent feature, training, and inference pipelines connected by a shared data layer. Through example ML systems, you'll tackle the hardest part of ML systems--the data, learning how to transform data into features and embeddings, and how to design a data model for AI. Develop batch ML systems at any scale Develop real-time ML systems by shifting left or shifting right feature computation Develop agentic ML systems that use LLMs, tools, and retrieval-augmented generation Understand and apply MLOps principles when developing and operating ML systems

Does size matter? When it comes to datasets, the conventional wisdom seems to be a resounding, "Yes!" But what about small datasets? Small- and mid-sized businesses and nonprofits, especially, often have limited web traffic, small email lists, CRM systems that can comfortably operate under the free tier, and lead and order counts that don't lend themselves to "big data" descriptors. Even large enterprises have scenarios where some datasets easily fit into Google Sheets with limited scrolling required. Should this data be dismissed out of hand, or should it be treated as what it is: potentially useful? Joe Domaleski from Country Fried Creative works with a lot of businesses that are operating in the small data world, and he was so intrigued by the potential of putting data to use on behalf of his clients that he's mid-way through getting a Master's degree in Analytics from Georgia Tech! He wrote a really useful article about the ins and outs of small data, so we brought him on for a discussion on the topic! This episode's Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is an explanation of synthetic controls and how they can be used as counterfactuals from Michael Kaminsky! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

#Demain : 2 sujets pour une soirée 100% engagée et dans la bonne humeur

Nous vous proposons une rencontre avec Jimmy et Loreleï d'A Moitié Plein, qui nous présenterons leur projet !

« À Moitié Plein, c’est l’application qui rend l’écologie positive et accessible à tous. Notre mission : transformer les gestes du quotidien en économies réelles d’eau, d’énergie et de CO₂, tout en proposant aux utilisateurs des codes promos chez des commerces vraiment éthiques. Nous voulons prouver qu’agir pour la planète peut être concret, motivant et bénéfique pour tous. Nous sommes actuellement en campagne de crowdfunding pour finaliser le développement de l’application et la rendre disponible sur les stores. Chaque contribution compte ! »

Découvrez et soutenez la campagne ici : https://fr.ulule.com/amoitieplein/

Et nous vous proposerons, en avant premier, la conférence « Comment construire une communauté d’agilistes engagée à impact » que Nathaniel et Frédéric joueront à l’Agile Tour Nantais fin octobre !

« Nous vous proposons ce retour d’expérience sur une petite tribu agile qui sans sponsor, sans budget, sans organisation formelle a construit une conférence et peut être même un mouvement avec un réel impact en seulement 3 ans. Au-delà de l’expérience, déjà incroyable, d’une équipe motivée qui co-construit un produit bénévolement, sans pression, sans moyen et avec une réelle bienveillance, découvrez les apprentissages et les découvertes faites en chemins, les erreurs menant à d’heureux événements ainsi que la puissance d’un collectif motivé. »

Le site de la conférence : https://www.demain-maintenant.fr/

Cela vous intéresse ? Rejoignez-nous pour une super soirée ! Agile tribu, 4 ter passage de la main d'or · Paris 20 Octobre 2025 - 19h00

Data does not just magically spring into existence. Someone, somewhere, has to decide what data gets created and the rules for its creation. We would claim that this often starts as a pretty simple exercise, and then, over time, that simplicity balloons to be pretty complex! What if, for instance, you decided to listen to every #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 going back to its inception in 1958? You may start by just capturing the song name, the artist, and the week(s) it was the #1 song. But, before you know it, you may find that you're adding in artist details…and songwriter details…and producer details…and genre details…and instrumentation details, and your dataset has 105 columns! But, oh, the questions that dataset could answer! And that's exactly the dataset that our guest for this episode, Chris Dalla Riva, created. He uses it (with a range of supplemental datasets) for his pieces in his Substack, Can't Get Much Higher, as well as the underlying raw material for his upcoming book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. While the underlying material was music, the parallels to more staid business data were many when it comes to the underlying processes and challenges for doing that work! This episode's Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is an explanation of the miracle of randomization when it comes to addressing unobserved confounders from Michael Kaminsky! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Stories on dbt core experiences from GWI and Orfium.