Carlos:  0:28
Compañeros! Welcome to another edition of the SQL Data Partners Podcast. I am Carlos L Chacon, your host. And I am feeling a little vacation-y today, for those of you checking us out on YouTube, thanks for tuning in. So, we are joined today, we have our co-hosts, Eugene Meidinger.

Eugene:  0:44
Howdy.

Carlos:  0:45
And Kevin Feasel.

Kevin:  0:46
Hello. And I just want to point out as well that when Carlos says he’s in vacation mode, mentally he’s already checked out.

Carlos:  0:55
I can’t even remember what episode we’re doing today, but my notes tell me it’s Episode 206 and we are happy today to be joined, and I’ve already asked forgiveness Taurius, so Taurius Litvinavicius, from Lithuania is here with us today. So welcome Taurus.

Taurius:  1:14
Hello.

Carlos:  1:15
Now can I be so bold as to go ahead and have you pronounce your name properly, please?

Taurius:  1:22
I’ll give it a shot, yes. It’s Taurius Litvinavicius, something like that.

Carlos:  1:28
There we go. Okay. So, I have not had the opportunity to get to your part of the world, but we appreciate you making some time to come chat with us.

Taurius:  1:39
Well, thank you.

Carlos:  1:39
So ultimately, we got connected through Manning. They connected us and you’ve done some trainings for them, which we’ll get to in a second. We’ve already mentioned, you’re in Lithuania. You’ve been doing lots of technology instructing and consulting. And we have a couple of codes for your trainings on Manning. So, compañeros, if you want to check that out, you find our conversation interesting and you want to get a little more detail, you can take a peek at sqldatapartners.com/dotnet or at sqldatapartners.com/206. Now we only have five codes for you this go-round, so the first five in and we won’t publish this anywhere. So, if you’re listening on the podcast, so sorry YouTubers, if you’re coming in through the podcast channel, this is the first you’re hearing of it, you get first access, so you can head over to sqldatapartners.com/dotnet. There’ll be a way to put in your email address and we’ll send you the codes for that training.

Why Taurius made a course on connecting to SQL Server

Carlos:  2:39
But ultimately, what we are talking about today is .NET Core Interactions with SQL Server. Now the number of questions I’m gonna ask today, I think, are going to be fairly light, but let me start with one.

Eugene:  2:53
Carlos is gonna be like, “what’s .NET? I’ve never–”

Kevin:  2:57
“What’s a Core? Is it like an apple core? Should I throw it away?”

Carlos:  3:01
Yeah. So, I will give the first and hopefully it’s a softball here. Why did you decide to put together a course on connecting to SQL Server?

Taurius:  3:12
Well, in general, I decided to make courses because I thought it was an opportunity to not only to make money, but to kind of have an additional credential. You know, when you do a course, you won’t always make that sort of money that you would want to make for your hours spent doing on it, but at the same time, it’s also a credential and it’s a great one. Obviously, not all companies that you will work with will accept something like that. It’s the same thing as a book. You know, I’ve wrote books, self published ones and one not self published, and some people just don’t care about that. They don’t care about that. They’re not interested. They want to see maybe certification, you know, there are people like that. But in general, the idea was that the first course I actually did was on .NET Core API development, it was a bit more of a vast one with lots of examples. It wasn’t a particularly good one. This new course, it’s a newer version of that previous course. I wouldn’t say the curriculum and the whole course in general wasn’t good, but the sound quality was lacking; that was sort of the main problem of it. But by now, I’ve done over 30 courses. Some of them are published somewhere. Some of them are well, unpublished at this point because I’ve done some on these new technologies that are now sort of expired. You know, when you do something on a new technology, it’s very, very quick. It goes out of production, the new version arrives, especially if something is in beta, you can’t expect the cost to live very long. It will die very soon, but you know, sometimes you can catch on it and make some good money on it, on that very new technology. I did make lots of money on Blazor technology, as the sort of new C# way of developing front-end applications. But getting back to that .NET Core API development, the very first course I did, actually, in the examples, I included the connecting to that SQL Server to those databases in the .NET Core API. I think it’s sort of a crucial thing. You have your front end, of course, it’s kind of separate from the back end from that API application, but the API application is not really separate from the database. If you have an API, you probably have the database as well, there’s no real escaping it. Of course, maybe there’s some server, micro servers going on, but usually it’s a database, some way to get to the server, which is the API, and then inserted into the database, and that’s all there is to it. So, I did that, and I think most people will have that arrangement when developing an API.

Eugene:  6:13
You had another–

Carlos:  6:14
I’m going to agree with you there, it is kind of the middleman and so here I’m going to defer to my better halves.

ADO.NET is a better choice than Entity Framework

Eugene:  6:23
Sure. Well, so I guess the question that I have is, we’re talking about using .NET Core to talk to SQL Server, but what specific? I’m gonna get the naming wrong, but like, library or tooling, or whatever are we talking about specifically? So I know, back like eight years ago, whenever I actually touched C#, I was using ADO.NET to do it, and I knew about any framework, but I never did enough. So like, are we talking any framework core or something else or what specific kind of tooling does your course cover for how to actually make that connection?

Taurius:  6:59
Well, I like to use the basic stuff, that would be probably what you would call ADO.NET. To me, it’s sort of a simple, basic way, you have everything laid out, you see your stored procedure, what parameters you put in, you have it all in one place. Now, the other option these days, I would say is that Entity Framework, it does exist, but I do believe it’s just a bit over complicated, and I also believe the versions change a lot. I think the code that I wrote several years ago with that simple implementation, I could copy and paste it in a new API, and it would work perfectly. I don’t think the same would happen with that Entity Framework. And I also saw somewhere that people think it’s quicker, more efficient, the Entity Framework, but I don’t believe that’s the case, sort of based on the ADO.NET, so it isn’t really something that you would get to be more efficient with your resources or whatever it is, you have to look out for, but again, those two ways do exist. And maybe if you’re into with third parties and in your applications, you can go the Entity Framework, but my advice would be to go to simple, reliable solution that will work for years and years to come.

Carlos:  8:26
So it is interesting. I promised not to say too much, and I’m already breaking that. But the whole idea of like Entity Framework, and it being faster, it seems like there’s an inference there. “Oh, well, it’s easier for me to get it set up, so therefore, it must be better.” Like, it must be faster.

Kevin:  8:44
I was setting up myself for a bit of a debate but there’s no debate there. It’s like nope, nope, I’m completely in agreement.

Eugene:  8:53
Yeah.

Kevin:  8:54
Yeah, ADO.NET, I completely agree, it is going to be faster because it anything you do on top of it will slow you down and Entity Framework, to its credit and also to its detriment, does a lot on top of it. So, you could easily get yourself in a situation where performance is just awful compared to straight ADO.NET or a micro orm, like a Dapper or write FSharp.Data.SqlClient or something like that.

Taurius:  9:23
Right, so, we all in agreement, I see. I can’t–

Kevin:  9:27
Yeah, we’ll have to try harder next time.

Is .NET Core up to the job?

Eugene:  9:28
Yeah. So, I do have a question about the whole .NET Core piece. So, I’m gonna give my butchered recollection of the series of events that kind of led us to where we are, and then feel free to correct me with the actual facts. But you know, my understanding was back when the world was formed, we had .NET framework, and, unfortunately, that ran on just Windows. And there was a lot of situations where it had gotten a bit bloated, it didn’t fit in with maybe the kind of more npm node style of package management that they’d like to be able to do with NuGet, instead, it’s just this giant, colossal framework, and with containers becoming a thing, it made sense to be able to run it on Linux. And so, they kind of open sourced it, which even at that time was still a little bit of a shock, even though Microsoft had been going in that direction, because there’s so many things you’re like, “they’re never gonna open source that.” Like Ballmer thought open source was just a cancer, literally, he said to that effect. And they open source it and they make it run on Linux, but the problem is that in a lot of ways, they were starting over. You know, they were starting with a much smaller API surface area so that they could have consistency across all devices. And my understanding, is the whole idea with .NET Standard is basically like, okay, here’s that API surface, and here’s what we support, and if you target the Standard, as opposed to the .NET Framework, or .NET Core or specific Linux or Android phone, or whatever, and my understanding is, I think they’re getting to the point where the numbers are about to sync up. And you can definitely correct me on that, but they’re at like three something for .NET Core, and they’re about to jump to five, so that finally, like the two are going to be in sync. So, do you feel that .NET Core is at a mature point? Because,  years ago, when it just came out, and when I actually knew more about C#, it seemed like it was still very immature, and people were really nervous to put any production workloads on it. But, do you feel like it’s becoming more of the standard now?

Taurius:  11:29
Yeah, well, .NET Core is fully prepared; I have no question about that. And I think, first of all, maybe I should explain a bit about or talk a bit about that .NET Standard thing. Now, for the most part, you can use .NET Core, you can use that to build WPF application, which is Windows application, you can use that for API development. You can also use that for Blazor development which allows you to develop front end applications using C#. So, it allows you to do that but it only allows– so for Blazor, it only allows the server side Blazor. Which basically, the C# code runs on the server and it’s just the way to write it, nothing fancy. Now the Blazor client side, which is the real new technology, here, that is .NET Standard, okay .NET Standard, that one is. And you know, that is quite useful. There are a few things that are missing, but mostly because of browser restrictions. But what I want to say here, .NET standard on Blazor, that’s the only real place I can think of where it is, at .NET standard. I mean, you can write a library with it and you can apply it, but everything else will be something a bit more specific. It might be .NET Framework, .NET Core, you have something a bit different for, say, UWP applications for Xamarin, it’s completely different. It’s a bit of a mess with Xamarin.

Eugene:  13:04
Yeah, I’ve been there.

If you’re new, start with .NET Core 3.1

Taurius:  13:06
Everyone can probably agree with that, but .NET Standard is sort of a basic foundation of anything else you can add to it. But mainly, if you’re looking to start with C# development, learn C# or just try it out, if you can do that, you should be looking at .NET Core. .NET Core 3.1. 3.1, today is the main technology.

Eugene:  13:34
Yeah, I mean, to use an analogy that reminds me of the whole schism that happened with Python like a decade ago, where for the viewers who may not know, Python is an open source language. And they decided somewhere around like 2.3 or something like that, that they were going to make a breaking jump. They were gonna make 3.0 and it wasn’t going to support a lot of the old stuff. You weren’t going to be able to just run your 2.3 code on 3.0. And they had library support to be able to like, you could import this library and they still have to make a change, but people, they drag their feet. And it you know, it literally took a decade to get to the point where people were recommending, start with Python 3. And so, I can imagine a similar situation that we’ve now arrived at where, here Taurius is telling us if you’re new, start with .NET Core, so that’s really good to hear.

Taurius:  14:25
Yes, yes.

Don’t use third parties, as much as possible

Kevin:  14:26
So, that actually brings up a question that I have, which is questioning that a little bit. And it is, when will .NET Core reach that tipping point where the assumption will be, “let’s start with Core and only use Framework as an exceptional case, in corporate environments?” I can understand if you want to learn C#, start with Core today because that’s the way forward. But do you have a feeling for when that might be the norm in the corporate world?

Taurius:  14:57
Well, I’m not really sure. I think what happens with corporations, maybe it’s more with startups, you get some sort of lower level first developer, they want to maybe go with some very cool, very hip technology, lots of libraries, open source resources and all that stuff, and they get into maybe some (?) and then node (?) so the back end and things like that, you know, and they maybe are a bit afraid of that C# thing, because it used to maybe be considered as a sort of big corporation thing. But in general .NET Core, whether it’s 2.0 or 3.1 or whatever it is, it didn’t really change that much unless you actually get into those deep things, or it’s third party integrations so there were a few changes, but if you keep your code basic, if you do it properly like that, with not too many third parties, you’ll be good to go, and then you’ll be able to move up to the next version quite easily. It won’t really be a problem that way, and I do believe that’s the thing that big corporations and even small corporations should consider. If you’re going to use lots of third parties initially, maybe you will save some time on that initial development, but what will happen next? You will need to update everything bit by bit; you’ll need to perhaps exclude something and get yourself another third party or will need to write some additional piece of code that would support the other third parties. So, I guess the moral of the story is don’t use third parties as much as possible.

Migrating from .NET Framework to .NET Core

Kevin:  16:46
Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the integration process with SQL Server. In .NET Framework world, we talked about ADO.NET or the system data SQL client library, and in .NET Core, you mentioned, we have ADO.NET through the Microsoft.data.SQLclient library. If I have experience with the former, with the .NET Framework version, is there anything I want to keep an eye on or keep in mind, if I migrate over to .NET Core and the new SQL client library?

Taurius:  17:24
I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s anything specific, as long as you have your code in a sort of basic arrangement. Maybe if you get into some deeper stuff, it will be different, but I doubt the risk difference, comparing those two. Again that ADO.NET, it sort of kept the same thing over time; it didn’t really do too much to that library that you download does get the increments in the version but other than math, I don’t really notice any differences when i update them. So, it should all be fine, I think.

A couple questions around query development

Kevin:  18:04
Okay, when it comes to integrating with SQL Server, what advice do you have around, say, query development? You know, let me break it up into a bunch of parts, because that way it will be easier for us to follow. First stored procedures, yes or no?

Taurius:  18:23
Oh, definitely. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Carlos:  18:25
Thank you. You can stay on the show. Yeah, that’s right.

Kevin:  18:30
Okay, so you’re a definite yes, and I think I know why, but I’m not the one being interviewed. So why, why do you recommend using stored procedures for storing queries?

Taurius:  18:43
First of all, because of the structure. You do have to store them somewhere. You know, you’re not just gonna write a piece of text somewhere in your C# code. What I prefer to do is do a project of course on Visual Studio, create a new, say, API project, and then I have a database. So, I create a new database project, that is actually possible. In Visual Studio, you can create database projects where you can create databases and you can create stored procedures, and then you simply click a few buttons, if that works properly, and then you upload it as database. You update the existing one, and you can also create a repository on Azure DevOps. So, it’s all in one place, it’s all working sort of almost perfectly. And you know, you can keep it very nice and clean, I think of as stored procedures. Besides that, there’s really no other place I can think of, to put those queries in. Again, you’re not going to have a piece of text laying around a string variable somewhere. You know, have some nice stored procedures, have your database tables, your databases as projects, and the code will be readable, it will be safe, and everything will be good.

Kevin:  20:02
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And you also mentioned another thing that I was going to ask about, which is databases and source control. The obvious answer is there, yes, as well.

Why Taurius really likes using Visual Studio

Kevin:  20:12
So, using Visual Studio projects, what are your experiences with those? I mean, what are the parts you like, you dislike, maybe some pointers for people who might not have used them before?

Taurius:  20:27
Well, I really have nothing that I don’t like about them. I mean, sure, maybe they shouldn’t have as example, pieces of code. Some of them have a bit too much. Like when I open Blazor projects, a new Blazor project, I have to remove, I think, a couple of page files, and maybe another file, and then some piece of code and several files. So, it can be a bit tricky that way. But other than that, it’s a great way to start your projects. You don’t need to really do anything. It saves probably hours of time; I had done some bit of Go programming. I didn’t have to start to project but then I did a little course on Go program language. So, every little piece of– what’s so difficult, you have to create a new folder and do all that stuff. It’s just so tedious. With Visual Studio, you just open a project, and maybe remove a few bits and pieces, and start coding, and start doing the work that you have to do. Not creating some project, doing some console interface thing and installing a bunch of stuff, it’s just one thing to install then open up the project and you’re good to code, and that’s it.

If you want to learn a language, C# would be the most native option

Kevin:  21:43
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, what are some compelling reasons for database administrators to be interested in .NET Core? Like, I can understand you’re an application developer who’s interested in .NET Core, or maybe you’re a database developer who’s a bit interested in .NET Core. But on the DBA side, are there any reasons why Carlos should be thinking about picking up that book on C# and I learning a bit of Core?

Taurius:  22:15
Well, if you only have to prepare the database, maybe there’s really no need to learn the language, the programming language, that interacts with the database. But then, on the other hand, if you want to actually learn the language that interacts with your databases, C# would be the best thing to do. You know, I have my SQL Server courses, a simple Get Started course and I kind of wanted to show some of these options. I think I tried to do C++, I tried to do Python and obviously C#. But I did Python, it was terribly difficult, and then C++, I think I did, but I excluded it for some reason. But again, they are not directly compatible, shall we say. The opportunity is there to try it, but it’s not one for taking. It’s best to avoid, I think, you know, it’s all native. You go C, that’s a Microsoft product, you go SQL Server, that’s a Microsoft product. It’s all Microsoft, it’s all under the same roof and kind of goes along together well. If you use another language, you will need to use a third party software, a third party library, whatever it may be called, and it will be a lot more difficult. So, you don’t have to, I think, learn but if you want to, then C# would be the more most native option to go with.

.NET uses several languages, including PowerShell & final advice

Kevin:  23:53
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And also, I’d add that the Carlos’s of the world do know or are learning PowerShell, which is another .NET language, and there are cases where PowerShell is a smoother experience than writing in C# or in F#. But there are other cases where trying to get, say, even something as simple as working with dates in PowerShell is a little bit excessive compared to what you would do in C#. They’re still using the same date/time library, it’s just the manipulation is a bit weird. And there are other cases, too, where certain types of conditional logic are easier in PowerShell thanks to the pipe. Others are a little bit more difficult because you’re feeling like you’re bound to the pipe. And I would say that knowing C# or F# and working within .NET Core opens up some doors even as a DBA when you have to do repetitive operations.

Carlos:  25:04
That, or you could make a friend, that would be my– There’s a reason we keep inviting you back, Kevin. Just one of these days it’s gonna be like, “hey, I need this F# thing.”

Kevin:  25:18
Now that you’ve finally found out that F#’s a real thing.

Eugene:  25:23
No, I mean, that sounds good. I mean, I feel like, as somebody who, again in a past life, at my last job, like six years ago was writing, oh geez, I was writing Web Forms code to basically slap a button in front of a stored procedure to give people in the company, the ability to do something in the database. It sounds like if suddenly I decided that I hate Power BI, and I’m going to start over as a developer, I could start working with .NET and talking to SQL Server and a lot of the stuff that I learned seven years ago is still relevant today, so that’s really good to hear.

Taurius:  25:57
Yes, it is relevant, although the Web Forms, I think, they are gone.

Eugene:  26:01
No, that’s gone and dead. That didn’t make the jump to Core. But MVC and Web API are still around, so yeah, no, web forms is long gone.

Kevin:  26:13
Long live Blazor.

Eugene:  26:14
Right?

Taurius:  26:15
Yeah, Blazor’s a new sort of thing. A better one in my opinion.

Eugene:  26:19
The cool new kid, yeah.

Taurius:  26:21
Yeah.

Kevin:  26:22
Okay, very good. Very good. And I’m gonna pretend I don’t know much about C# despite having two copies of Visual Studio Code open with Azure Functions and C#.

Carlos:  26:34
So last questions, or last thoughts, Taurius?

Taurius:  26:37
Well, I really don’t have anything to add. But I do have to say, I said don’t use third parties and I really want to urge that advice. Try to avoid them. Especially if you’re using C# and that SQL Server arrangement, you really don’t need that. Try to avoid that as much as possible; you will save time in the future. So that’s my final advice.

SQL Family Questions

Carlos:  27:01
There you go. Okay, should we do SQL Family? Okay, so I know we’ve been talking a lot more on the application side, but our first question is, how did you get started with SQL Server?

Taurius:  27:13
I’m not quite sure, but I do know, I needed a database, some kind of a database, and I was into C# world at that time, so it just seemed like an obvious choice. I didn’t really consider anything else too much. It’s a premium product. it’s a nice product and why not? Plus, it goes alongside with C# and it’s a good choice, I think.

Carlos:  27:41
There you go. The fates aligned and you didn’t have to stumble over some of the other environments out there. Okay, so now you come from a slightly different, I guess background. We’ve talked about you being a technology consultant and you’ve done some courses, obviously, you do quite a bit of development. But what advice would you give for someone wanting to pursue a career similar to yours?

Taurius:  28:07
Well, I think first of all, you really have to think about what you want to learn, okay? What you will work is one thing, but what can you learn, what can you afford to learn, and really look into the opportunities that will follow after you learn that specific thing. Look at the drawbacks, look at all those different things, and if you are going with a programming language, some kind of a programming language, don’t just go online and see which one has the most followers. You need to kind of go deeper, read those different opinions. If you see that something is great, say, “yeah, JS”, is great. You can find lots of these opinions, but try to read the other ones, the opposite side of things, just explore it all a bit deeper. I would advise people to do that, because we have a lot of trendiness going on these days, and you can really get caught up in that, and then that stuff gets old and you have that piece of knowledge and it’s utterly useless. So, it’s best to be careful and maybe go for something that’s been around for ages say, you know, of course C# and C++, is always a good choice. It’s been around for ages, and it will be around for ages. It will always be useful, but you know, don’t settle for some Framework or for something very specific. That’s not a good choice. It will be out and about in no time and you’ll just lose time learning something new.

Carlos:  29:44
Okay, now, what’s one thing that can make your day instantly better?

Taurius:  29:49
I’m not sure. I think maybe something actually working.

Carlos:  29:56
But it compiles and you’re like–

Carlos:  29:59
Yeah, well, that and even if you start a call with someone and sometimes the sound isn’t there or something like that. So yeah, if it works, it’s great. If it doesn’t work, well, it’s not a good day.

Carlos:  30:11
There you go, makes sense. Now, I don’t know what the exchange rate is, and you’ll forgive me that I didn’t look it up. So, we’re going to assume that you can do a translation in your head or conversion in your head, here. So, you got $10,000 which we’re assuming is US dollars. I’m not sure that–

Kevin:  30:29
8500 euro.

Carlos:  30:30
There we go.

Kevin:  30:32
Carlos is mailing it to you.

Carlos:  30:34
Thank you, Kevin.

Taurius:  30:35
Be that would be, I think, around 9000 euros, yes, these days. But yeah, I get the amount.

Carlos:  30:43
So, what computer tech would you purchase?

Taurius:  30:46
Well, if I had nothing and if I had that amount, first of all, I would leave some money aside for subscription services.

Carlos:  30:56
Ah, there we go.

Carlos:  30:57
Because, these days, you can get a lot more for your money in these subscriptions. $10, $5, wherever it may be a month, you can get a lot more than just buying standalone software. But other than that, if I was a traveler, if I wanted to travel, I would buy a laptop and a proper computer. Unfortunately, I’m not a traveler, but I thought I would travel, so last year, I bought a laptop. Now I have a laptop and a proper monitor connected to it. So, I wouldn’t advise that arrangement, but well, it works well, it’s a strong one, so I will keep it for a bit. But again, if you are a traveler, buy a laptop. If you are not a traveler, I don’t advise buying a laptop. They’re hard to clean, and I don’t believe they will last for as much time as a normal computer would. I had my old computer for, I guess 10 years now. So, I mean I did have to change the power supply unit, I think, and a few things but it wasn’t– you know, it still works. I don’t use it, but it still works, and I could do some coding still, run programs. It would be fine and it’s 10 years old. So, if you want something to last, buy proper computer, and you will be able to add a proper screen, big screen, you’ll be able to move it somewhere to the side, to the front, and it will have a decent distance from your eyes. That’s an important thing, I think. You know, with laptops, you have to put your shoulders kind of together and it’s not the best stance I believe, and it’s not very healthy. So, just buy a proper computer; it will last longer, and you will be healthier. So again, if I was to travel, I would buy an additional laptop. If I wasn’t, I would buy a decent computer. Probably a couple grand worth. I’m not sure what that means in the US, anything at all. You know, if you don’t know anything about computers, and you need to do programming, write decent programs, run those programs, especially sort of not just console applications, but if you’re doing something visual, and especially if you’re doing mobile development, what you want to buy is a gaming computer. If you can run the newest game, I don’t know, the newest games, I don’t know them, I don’t play them. But if you can run that, you will be able to run your applications and your projects. So that’s my little biased advice. But, again, so it’s a computer, it’s a keyboard, you know, maybe a comfortable chair; I don’t think that’s really necessary, and it’s not a really big expense. You know, I think people buy these expensive ones, they cost like 500 bucks and you’re sitting like in a racing car or something. I don’t think you need that. You know, I sit on a sofa, kitchen table chair and I’m fine with that, but maybe someone needs it.

Carlos:  34:09
You say that, but then you have to sit there for 12 hours while you’re gaming. And yeah. You need to be able to lean over right to give yourself food or drink and, you know.

Taurius:  34:21
If you do gaming then yeah, maybe it’s a consideration, but not for me.

Carlos:  34:28
Okay, so what famous person would you most like to spend the day? We normally say a famous person in history, but it doesn’t have to be necessarily a historical person.

Taurius:  34:38
Well, let’s do historical sort of. I say Dean Martin, because it’s fun, you know, and everyone knows who he is, I would think.

Carlos:  34:46
Very good. Okay, so Taurius, our last question for you today, what is your favorite ice cream topping?

Taurius:  34:54
Okay, well, I’ll have to disappoint you a bit. I don’t really like ice cream and it’s not about the taste. I do these recordings and I get on a phone a lot and I do believe eating ice cream kind of damages my voice a bit, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose it and that’s why I don’t really eat ice cream. I do however like one of those squishier ice creams where they come from this machine and it’s sort of a circle and it’s sort of soft ice cream. I have no clue what it’s called, but I do like that.

Carlos:  35:26
Yeah, it’s called soft serve, soft serve.

Taurius:  35:29
Oh, really? I didn’t think it had a name.

Carlos:  35:32
Yeah, yeah. That’s good stuff. Okay, so just that traditional ice cream, no toppings. Although, I know you said you’re not traveling, but next time you get yourself to a Dairy Queen, try a dipped cone, and then let me know.

Taurius:  35:35
Okay, okay, I’ll remember that.

Carlos:  35:50
Okay, Taurius, well, welcome– sorry, thank you for being on our podcast. Yeah, let’s start again.

Kevin:  35:56
We just started recording everybody.

Carlos:  35:59
I forgot to hit the record. button. No.

Kevin:  36:01
Carlos actually lives in a Quentin Tarantino movie. So, he always put the beginning at the end.

Compañero Shout-Outs

Carlos:  36:07
Yes, okay. So, thanks for being with us today. Before we let you go, I do have a couple of shoutouts I want to give. Let’s see we’ve got Eric @sql314. Arvind Shyamsundar. Kevin, you’re– I did something wrong?

Kevin:  36:27
I’m shaking my head because he totally messed up Arvind’s name.

Carlos:  36:31
Oh, man, what did I say? Arvind? I didn’t say Arvind?

Kevin:  36:36
You messed up his last name. Shyamsundar.

Carlos:  36:39
Oh, I apologize. Arvind.

Kevin:  36:40
He’s one of the greats at Microsoft.

Carlos:  36:41
There we go. Oh, Arvind, very nice. I have a last name people get, as does Taurius, have last name that people mix up. Ahmad Bazzi, Ash Dhingra, Derek at h-e-z-i-dog?

Kevin:  36:57
I’m going to go with hezidog.

Carlos:  36:58
Hezidog, there we go. And Roberto Fonseca, so, thanks–

Kevin:  37:04
I’ve no complaints about that last one.

Carlos:  37:06
Yeah, no.

Kevin:  37:08
Nailed it.

Carlos:  37:09
Every time I see that Fonseca there is a well, not so famous, I guess, anymore, but famous motorcyclist from Costa Rica where my dad’s from, Fonseca. He actually was in a bad accident and is now paralyzed, but I got to see him race once, and anyway, I always think of him. I digress, but thank you, Taurius for being on the program. Thank you comp–

Kevin:  37:32
That was great to lose Carlos on.

Eugene:  37:32
Did we lose him? Oh, there we go.

Closing Thoughts & Contact Info

Carlos:  37:34
Oh, we had a little network blip there. Thank you, compañeros, for tuning in. So now– oh, boy, Taurius, if– oh, you’ve got to be joking me.

Eugene:  37:46
Yeah, the video version people are gonna be like, “Oh, no.”

Kevin:  37:48
Oh, here’s Carlos again. He’s back.

Eugene:  37:50
Alright, Carlos, quick, end the podcast while we still can.

Carlos:  37:53
I know, that’s right, this is– something’s not going on. Okay, so if you want to reach out to us, Taurius, how can people connect with you?

Taurius:  38:00
Over LinkedIn, just type in my name if you can spell it, and you’ll find me. Oh, yeah. that’s good.

Carlos:  38:08
We’ll make that link available on our show notes. Eugene?

Eugene:  38:11
You can find me on Twitter at sqlgene.

Carlos:  38:14
Kevin.

Kevin:  38:15
I just put my contact info in this Azure function, so if you know which one to call, you’ll get it.

Carlos:  38:20
You can get it. Okay, compañeros, before my connection goes out again, I am available at Carlos L Chacon on LinkedIn and other platforms. Thanks, everybody who’s connecting, just let us know you’re listening to the podcast. We appreciate it, and I hope to see you on the SQL Trail.