It’s going to take some getting used to. For you and for me, but it’s worth it.

Introducing the New Me

I changed my name to Stacia Varga last month because (drumroll) on May 18 I was part of a fabulous #sqlwedding in Las Vegas in which @mr_stacia and I said some special words to each other and at which @mr_denny officiated.

I promised @mr_stacia some time ago that I would be Mrs. Varga if he would be @mr_stacia. He did, so I did, and here we are! I admit I’m still mangling my name when I try to say it or spell it, only because I was Stacia Misner for a very long time and I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I just need more practice with the new name!

Something borrowed, something blue.

I’m hopeful that people can pronounce Varga more easily than Misner (which 50% of the time was mispronounced). The name Stacia is challenging enough for some people (and for those who don’t know yet, it’s Stay-sha).  As for name recognition at conferences and on my books, I’ll just take my chances. I don’t know of any Stacia’s in the BI space at this time, so I expect everyone will figure out that Stacia Misner and Stacia Varga are one and the same at some point!

@mr_stacia has been a wonderful addition not only to my personal life, but also to my business life. He helps me manage Data Inspirations, edits my Pluralsight videos, and assists with so many other tasks that now I cannot fathom how I functioned without him previously. If you ever attend a conference, you’re likely to see him with me and perhaps one day you’ll even see him speak with me. (We have some clever ideas for some joint presentations in the future!)

What Else is New?

Oh my, 2015 has been such a busy year for me which is why I’ve been relatively quiet on the blog. I’ve been working with several clients on their data warehouse projects and really fallen head over heels in love with BIML (… @mr_stacia understands how I feel about technology, so it’s ok). I have praised its virtues in conference sessions previously, but I rarely have time to get into any depth about the benefits I’ve experienced first-hand and a full set of code to demonstrate a complete solution. To fix that, I’ve decided that my next Pluralsight course will give you a gentle introduction to BIML and show you how to approach an end-to-end data warehouse ETL solution and how easy to implement schema changes or even add new subject areas to the data warehouse after the first phase of development. I’m excited to work on this course because although there are a lot of great online BIML resources, there’s nothing comprehensive to show an end-to-end design. Expect to see this course available online this summer!

And More BI Love!

Every year there seems to be something new in the Microsoft BI stack. Most recently, much attention was given to cloud and Power BI. Just when we get our arms around a particular feature set, new features get added! But I get asked a lot why we haven’t seen a lot of love given to the on-premises BI components of SQL Server. I’m happy to say the love is coming back around. Jen Underwood (b|t)has a great overview in her post Microsoft Breathes Life Back into SQL Server BI On-Prem.

You can bet I’ll be doing some writing this year myself about all this good stuff in the Microsoft BI space, including SQL Server 2016. Probably more than one new chapter!