SQLGeordie's Blog

Pretty much anything and everything that you would need for a SQL Server, Azure, AWS, GCP, Power BI etc demo dataset can be found on kaggle. The search facility is easy to use and you can also filter on the particular file type and license you want. I also like the “quicklook” option so you can quickly check to see if indeed it is the sort of data you want as opposed to having to download the data, open it and then realise it’s nothing like what you are after.

I never knew a lot about kaggle and to be honest, other than being able to get datasets from it, I never had a need to. Taken from wikipedia, “Kaggle, a subsidiary of Google LLC, is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners. Kaggle allows users to find and publish data sets, explore and build models in a web-based data-science environment, work with other data scientists and machine learning engineers, and enter competitions to solve data science challenges.“

It’s actually no surprise that they’re a subsidiary of Google when you look at most if not all of Google’s datasets, they all seem to link to kaggle….

I’ve included a couple of useful datasets that I’ve used in the past, hopefully you’ll find them useful also:

• kaggle.com
• covid-19
• Used Cars
• Hyper Cars 2019 – I like fast cars!
• UK Housing Prices Paid
• UK Traffic Counts
• UK Road Accidents Incidence
• UK Flight Data Statistics 2018

Back to dataset main page

For most people on the planet with internet access, the first place to visit when looking for anything on the web is Google……….other search engines are available. Not only can you search using the standard search engine but they have various spin offs specific for searching datasets.

Google tracks dateset searches, allows you to explore these and provide the ability to download the data either direct from one of their charts or by providing back links to the site in which it came from. Chances are, kaggle will be one of them which is quite obvious when they are a subsidiary of Google LLC 🙂

There are various places within google to search the datasets, depending on what it is you’re looking for, below are some examples:

• Google Trends
• Public Data
• Big Query DataSets

Back to dataset main page

This is just a short overview page of various dataset sources I’ve used in the past for usage in my SQL Server, Azure, AWS and Power BI demo’s. Most if not all of these are free as I don’t like paying for stuff and there are some whereby you can generate your own data if there is something more specific you need……..just be careful as although its “randomly” generated, I have had issues where I pushed the files to github and as it happens, one of the email addresses randomly generated was that of an employee of a company which I’d never heard of. Pure chance (I believe) but something to be mindful of if that is your intention for use.

Power BI Sample DataSets

Not only datasets but also Power BI sample pbix files for anyone looking to get started with it.

GenerateData – Create your own

If there is a specific dataset you are looking for, with specific column names and data types then this is a useful tool. Data is restricted to 100 rows initially unless you sign up / donate but worth a look:

data.gov.uk

At the time of writing there are 54,846 datasets available on here. Some are a bit bizarre (See below) and are specific to the UK so unless you’re looking for that kind of thing, it may not be the place for you.

Other very specific examples (apart from that below) I’ve found are “NHS Bassetlaw CCG Expenditure over £25K” and “Planned road works on the HE road network“………..

“Super Bizarre DataSets“

I’ve not used any of these but saw this article via Brent Ozar’s weekly newsletter – https://thestacker.com/. Some of them sound pretty cool, others are a bit out there such as: “Abandoned Shopping Trolleys in Bristol Rivers” from data.gov.uk and “The Great British Toilet Map“…….

MSBuild 2020 is currently underway and if, like me, you can’t attend every session you would like to, well Microsoft have this covered with their Build Book of News.

This gives a great overview of all the latest information including:

• the exciting news on Azure (Synapse) Analytics
• Azure SQL Edge now in Public preview

Enjoy the conference and if you miss any of it, enjoy the Book of News 😃

Video recording of the Techorama.nl demo.

This video shows a failed test in the previous release and how we go about fixing it. It also shows how the build pipeline was built and steps through the release pipeline.

Blog posts to follow……