James World - AI - Episode 394
AI DevOps Podcast
James World is a technology leader with decades of hands‑on engineering experience, enabling enterprises to thrive through modern cloud and AI‑driven solutions. He has spent well over ten years architecting cloud‑native platforms on Microsoft Azure, guiding multiple development teams through complex digital transformations while remaining deeply involved in the code and critical technical decision‑making. His background spans financial services and other enterprise environments where reliability, performance, and scalability are non‑negotiable. He is a Microsoft Certified Azure...
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Daniel Ward: AI Agents - Episode 393
AI DevOps Podcast
Daniel Ward is a Microsoft .NET MVP and software consultant at Lean TECHniques in San Antonio, TX. He works with teams to deliver high‑quality software through modern engineering practices, including effective CI/CD, automated testing, AI adoption, and product management. His background spans multiple industries such as finance, retail, and agriculture, and he has served as a software developer, technical coach, agile coach, and tech lead. Daniel is also a conference speaker, a contributor to the .NET community, and the creator behind Dan In a Can, where he writes about .NET, testing,...
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Richard Lander: DotNet Inspect - Episode 392
AI DevOps Podcast
Richard Lander is a Principal Program Manager on the .NET team at Microsoft. He's been with Microsoft since 2000, and working on .NET since 2003! Currently, he’s working on runtime features, docker container experience, blogging and customer engagement. He's also part of the design team that defines new .NET runtime capabilities and features. Mentioned in This Episode Suzanne Cook's Assembler Blog SourceLink dnx dotnet-inspect Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.
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Savino Carlone: ERP Systems - Episode 391
AI DevOps Podcast
Savino Carlone, or Savi for short, is a 25‑year backend developer from Turin, Italy with experience across enterprise and high‑performance systems in sports broadcasting, banking, and ERP platforms. Savi has been nominated in the past to be on the board of directors for the .NET Foundation. He co‑leads the Torino .NET Users Group, which has over 1,200 members. He collaborates with Codemotion, and co‑hosts the Devs Book Club, in Italian. He currently leads development on the web‑based ERP system Fattutto in Northwest Italy. Mentioned in this Episode Book - Real-World Web...
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Paul Duvall: AI-Driven Development - Episode 390
AI DevOps Podcast
Paul Duvall is an award‑winning author, longtime DevOps leader, and former AWS executive with more than two decades of experience in software engineering. He co‑founded Stelligent, establishing a business dedicated to enabling enterprise customers adopt DevOps and Security practices on AWS. He is the author of the book at defined CI for the world: Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk. The book received the 2008 Jolt Award and continues to be the official textbook for continuous integration. Today, he focuses on helping engineering teams adopt AI‑native...
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Damian Brady: GitHub AI - Episode 389
AI DevOps Podcast
Damian Brady is a Staff Developer Advocate at GitHub. He's a developer, speaker, and author specializing in AI, DevOps, MLOps, developer process, and software architecture. Formerly a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft for four years, and before that, a dev at Octopus Deploy and a Microsoft MVP, he has a 25-year background in software development and consulting in a broad range of industries. In Australia, he co-organized the Brisbane .Net User Group and launched the annual DDD Brisbane conference. Mentioned In This Episode Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show...
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David Starr: DevOps Success Story - Episode 388
AI DevOps Podcast
David Starr is the President and Founder of Cumulus26, which helps companies succeed in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and other facets of Azure. He's had a multi-decade career at Microsoft, Godaddy and others in senior technical leadership roles. He's spoken at industry conferences and delivered technical training courses and many other things. Mentioned In This Episode Cumulus26 AmpUp - for Microsoft Markeplace Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.
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Kevin Griffin: Engineering for System Uptime - Episode 387
AI DevOps Podcast
With over 20 years of software development experience, Kevin Griffin is a passionate and versatile leader, trainer, and consultant in the .NET ecosystem. He has worked with various industries, from the United States Military to health care to ticket brokering, delivering high-quality solutions and empowering his clients and teams to succeed. In his day job, he is the CTO at Shows On Sale where he oversees the technical strategy and direction of the company. Kevin also has served as the President of the .NET Foundation for the last term. And Microsoft has conferred the Microsoft MVP to him at...
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Maddy Montaquila: .NET Update - Episode 386
AI DevOps Podcast
Maddy Montaquila is a Senior Product Manager on the Aspire team and has previous been on the MAUI team and has been working with .NET mobile apps since 2018 working on Xamarin tooling. When she first joined Microsoft and worked with the Xamarin team as an intern, she realized the impact that she could have in creating amazing developer tools and frameworks, which inspired her to pursue a role as Program Manager. You can connect with her on Twitter and GitHub @maddymontaquila! Mentioned in this episode: Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for...
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Graham McMillan: Database DevOps - Episode 385
AI DevOps Podcast
Graham is the Chief Technical Officer at Redgate Software, where he leads the teams behind industry‑leading Database DevOps tools. Before Redgate, Graham's experiences includes multiple decades in complex projects and leadership oversight at many companies including Elsevier, IBM, Sun, BEA, and Oracle. He’s also a two‑time round‑the‑world yachtsman, bringing hard‑earned leadership experience from some of the most demanding environments on earth. - Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.
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Lee Brownhill is a Principal Cloud DBA at Cloud Rede with deep expertise in SQL Server performance tuning and automation. With years of experience across Azure and AWS, Lee helps clients optimize their cloud data platforms.
His journey began in IT support, quickly evolving into a passion for SQL Server that led him through roles as a Production and Developer DBA. Now, he’s a trusted consultant, known for making systems run faster and smarter.
Lee is a Redgate Community Ambassador, a regular at SQLBits and Data Relay, and once spent a transformative week learning from T-SQL legend Itzik Ben-Gan. Whether on-prem or in the cloud, Lee’s mission is simple: make SQL Server shine.
Topics of Discussion:
[2:33] Lee shares his career journey, starting in general IT support and transitioning to a role involving Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which introduced him to SQL Server.
[5:48] Jeffrey discusses the challenges faced by young programmers who work with databases but lack deep experience.
[7:05] Lee highlights common anti-patterns in SQL Server.
[8:04] The concept of “row by agonizing row.”
[8:46] Lee shares his thought process when addressing performance problems in SQL Server.
[9:12] Categorizing issues based on their severity and urgency using a tried-and-true checklist.
[10:36] Taking a step back to look at the issue holistically before diving into specific details.
[16:04] An optimal database structure and segmentation in 2025, and the importance of normalization to avoid redundant data and ensure data integrity.
[20:00] The different ways to host SQL Server in Azure and the benefits of each.
[23:02] Metrics for determining if an Azure SQL instance is over- or under-provisioned.
[25:02] The value of Azure’s costing tools in helping to optimize resource usage and reduce costs.
[26:07] The work of site reliability engineers who use KQL to analyze logs and identify issues.
[30:09] Lee’s blog is a repository of technical topics, including SQL Server, performance tuning, and unit testing.
[32:10] SQL Server 2025 features and the importance of learning and understanding new technologies.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Want to Learn More?
Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.