Hello Data

My name is Diego Vega and I am a new Program Manager in the Data Programmability team.

This is my first post as a Microsoft employee!

I came here from an ISV/small software company world: A world in which data access is such an important thing as breathing, and yet, it is seldom done unconsciously or even comfortably.

At Microsoft, they (oh, should I now say "we"?) have been investing for many years in this space, trying to come up with easier approaches, more suitable abstractions, and merely better tools.

I personally think we have largely succeeded in improving our offers and in simplifying our customers job each time. From ODBC, to ADO.NET and more recently LINQ, Microsoft's contribution has been very much influential.

The latest fruit of this investment is the Entity Framework, a piece of technology that I think could affect the way we do and perceive data access in a magnitude comparable to what relational databases did more than 20 years ago.

I am very excited to be part of the team that is building this technology and I can hardly think of a better place to be at Microsoft at this time!

But as I have said, "we" (as in us, nous, nosotros) have been building this for years and "I" (as in me, je, yo) have just arrived. Only groking it well (and simultaneously learning how to be a good PM), will be a great challenge.

Therefore, I intend to use this blog as learning tool for myself, by compiling my impressions, code samples, and whatever I find pivotal in understanding the technology. In my experience, you learn more when you explain things. Can't explain why :)

Hopefully, in sharing my learning progress, I will also make a small contribution in simplifying your job.