Prashant Kumar Mishra is the author of Limitless Analytics with Azure Synapse, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Prashant: Azure SQL, Azure Synapse, Power BI, Azure Data Factory, Cosmos DB, etc.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Prashant: Last year I decided to write a book but it took some time to figure which topic shall I pick up that people would like to read about. Azure Synapse was a new potential product in the market so, I thought this is the best candidate for my first book. I started looking for some famous technical publications who would like my proposal and will give me a chance to write a book for them. I reached out to Packt and luckily they were looking for some author who could write a book on Azure Synapse and that’s how I started my journey.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Prashant: Azure Synapse is a new product in the market so, obviously there was no enough material available on the internet. So, I had to do my own research to understand the product correctly so that I can make my readers understand the same in an easy manner. I kept myself updated with any Synapse-related blogs, Microsoft docs, and so on.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Prashant: The biggest challenge that any full-time working professional might encounter is “Time”. You need to spend your late-night hours, your weekends, and family time on your book because you have a deadline to complete it.
Apart from this, the product kept on changing until it was made available to the public in Jan’21 so, I needed to go back and forth multiple times to change the screenshots or even the topic because there was some major change in the product suddenly.
But the fact is, you have already taken the decision to complete the book so nothing could stop you from proceeding further. I just kept on pushing myself keeping one chapter in mind always, never thought that I have to complete 14 chapters. Then, it became really easy to steer through all the challenges and reach the final goal
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Prashant: This is the future, Microsoft has built this unified platform for data analytics that has a long way to go.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Prashant: Most of the books are filled with a lot of theory but let’s try to understand who needs this book. Data engineers, data scientists, report developers, and so on but do they really need to know the only theory? The answer is no, they need step-by-step guidance to learn new technology in the simplest manner and the book has done this job very well for all the topics covered.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Prashant: Readers will be able to implement data analytics on Azure with the help of this book. They will not only understand the core concepts of Azure Synapse but will also learn how to perform data integration, visualizations, and analytics using this limitless analytics service.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Prashant: I would suggest readers to perform the examples given in the book on their own to get a better understanding of all the topics covered in this book. Highlight some of the topics that you want to learn in more detail and search for blogs, articles, or videos to learn about the specific topic in detail. And please follow the technical journals to keep yourself updated with the latest changes in the product.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Prashant: https://azuredataplatform.com
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Prashant: Readers can follow Microsoft docs for the latest updates and the tech community.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-synapse-analytics/bg-p/AzureSynapseAnalyticsBlog
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Prashant: This is the first technical book that I have authored but everyone at Packt was so cooperative that I never felt naïve. I got all the possible help on writing this book from the time I started drafting my outline. Everyone in the team was so cooperative and patient that I could not have asked for any other publication to start my author journey with.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Prashant: I generally follow the Microsoft Tech community blogs and Medium articles.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Prashant: I had dedicated 2 hours of time daily to write the book and almost the entire weekend. I kept few days completely free for myself from writing and even from my office to recharge myself and continue writing with full energy.
Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Prashant: One simple word, consistency. If you have decided to dedicate your two hours every day, then just go for it. It’s possible that every day you may not be in the correct mood to write anything but still, you can use these two hours for your research about the topic that you are writing that week.
You can find Prashant’s book on Amazon by following this link click
