Bob Ward
Principal Architect at Microsoft
North Richland Hills, Texas, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBob Ward is a Principal Architect on the Microsoft Azure Data team with over 27 years at Microsoft and deep, hands-on ownership of every SQL Server release from OS/2 to SQL Server 2019 and Azure SQL. He blends product architecture, escalation engineering, and customer-facing leadership, having led Azure Data engineering while previously serving as CTO for Customer Service and Support. A prolific presenter and author—creator of Apress titles and the popular Azure SQL for Beginners series—he translates database internals into practical guidance for practitioners. His open demos and scripts in microsoft/bobsql and sqlworkshops show a continued focus on data virtualization, external tables, and Azure–S3 integration for real-world data integration and performance labs. Based in North Richland Hills, Texas, he pairs deep institutional knowledge of SQL Server with active community teaching and reproducible workshop artifacts that help teams adopt Azure SQL features quickly.
9 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Computer Science at Baylor University
English
Github Skills (9)
data-virtualization10
azure-sql-database10
database-administration10
sql10
azure-sql10
tsql10
object-store9
object-storage9
performance-tuning8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
microsoft/bobsql
Dec 2017 - Nov 2022
demos, scripts, samples, and code from the two bobs who work at Microsoft on SQL Server
Role in this project:
Database Engineer / Database Administrator
Database Engineer / Database AdministratorContributions:302 commits, 60 PRs, 341 pushes in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Bob's commits primarily focus on creating and modifying SQL Server databases within the `microsoft/bobsql` repository, as evidenced by the numerous SQL scripts. They added demos, scripts, and samples related to SQL Server functionalities like AutoTune and also worked on Azure SQL Database and S3 object storage connectivity, which are essential components of data management. The contributions include creating objects like external tables and database scoped credentials to set up data virtualization and data integration strategies.
sqlserversql-serversqllinuxmicrosoft
microsoft/sqlworkshops
Feb 2019 - Mar 2020
SQL Server Workshops
Role in this project:Database Engineer / Database Administrator
Database Engineer / Database AdministratorContributions:367 commits, 65 PRs, 359 pushes in 1 year 1 month
Contributions summary:Bob added and modified SQL scripts related to SQL Server database workshops. The commits included creating external tables for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, creating a master key, database scoped credentials, and external data sources for data virtualization labs. They also focused on setting up database options and running various workload scripts related to performance and availability.
sql-serversqlazure-sql-databaseazurepowerbi
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