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Day: December 5, 2023

Getting Started with Semantic Kernel in C#

Published 2023-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Eland tries out Semantic Kernel:

Generative AI systems use large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 Turbo (ChatGPT) or GPT-4 to respond to text prompts from the user. But these systems have serious limitations in that they only include information baked into the model at the time of training. Technologies like retrieval augmentation generation (RAG) help overcome this by pulling in additional information.

AI orchestration frameworks make this possible by tying together LLMs and additional sources of information via RAG. Additionally, AI orchestration systems can provide capabilities to generative AI systems, such as inserting records in a database, sending emails, or calling out to external systems.

In this article we’ll look at the high-level capabilities building AI orchestration systems in C# with Semantic Kernel, a rapidly maturing open-source AI orchestration framework.

Click through to see how things work.

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Finding the First and Last Number of a String in SQL and Excel

Published 2023-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Wilkie does some soul searching, or at least string searching:

To enjoy these puzzles, you will need to go to the Official Advent of Code website, sign up for their leaderboards and whatnot if you choose to, and then continue to 2023 and Day 1. Today, we’ll start with Day 1 – since it is the first of our programming puzzles and work our way up from there…

We’re asked – given a string – to find the first (and last) number in that string. We are then to concatenate them, add them all up, and provide the result. It should be pretty simple, but let’s see…

Click through for Kevin’s two answers.

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Enabling Microsoft Fabric

Published 2023-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun continues a series on Microsoft Fabric:

If you have used Power BI services in the past, you will be on board immediately. The outlook is the as it is with the Power BI. You will only need additional credentials to access the services. In general, you will need Azure subscription, Power BI service already enabled, and the ability for your organization to enable Fabric with Admin roles

Click through to see how to enable Microsoft Fabric in your environment.

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SQL Server on Azure Arc Performance Dashboards

Published 2023-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Lance Wright shows off a dashboard:

At Ignite 2023, we announced the public preview of performance dashboards for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc. With these performance dashbaord, DBAs and IT Admins now get performance monitoring right from within Azure. No need to setup and login to another tool or remotely connect to the SQL Server to run performance queries. Let Azure Arc do the heavy lifting so you can get to your performance metrics faster. 

This is another tool in the toolbox of DBAs, IT admins, and cloud specialists looking to gain better visibility into their hybrid and multi-cloud workloads. If a SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc meets the requirements for data collection (see “How to enable performance dashboards”), Azure Arc will automatically collect the following types of data from the Dynamic Management Views (DMV) datasets oof the SQL Server: 

Click through to see what it includes and how to enable it.

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Working around a Contained Availability Group Error

Published 2023-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Sean Gallardy talks about an error:

Contained Availability Groups are the most recent update to the Availability Groups feature, and a great update at that! They are completely new in SQL Server 2022, and like any new feature (or even mature ones) there will be some bugs. Enter in some Access Violations (AVs) that may occur when creating a new contained availability group.

Read on for an example of the error and what you can do until Microsoft fixes it.

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