Jason Haley

Ramblings from an Independent Consultant

Introducing: the Local RAG Series (with Semantic Kernel)

Announcing: The Local RAG Series with Semantic Kernel This year I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and its related technologies. I’ve also had my eye on agents and plan to focus on them a lot in 2025. From what I’ve seen with my limited work with agents so far is: they can be chatty. This has lead me to believe that agents will really take off once either the price of LLMs available via APIs lower (a lot) or local models become sufficient to use.

Posted by Jason on Sunday, December 22, 2024

A Semantic Kernel Workshop

Announcing: A Semantic Kernel Workshop Friday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I finally were able to make the workshop we’ve been working on for the past couple of months public. We had an in person day long event where we used the content, which was received really well. The attendees had some good questions - giving us some really good ideas on how to improve the content. Target audience: .

Posted by Jason on Sunday, December 8, 2024

Hands-on AI Workshop Dec 2024

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I put on a Hands-on AI Workshop in Burlington MA. The goal was to give the attendees hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio looking to learn GenAI. I gave the middle presentations and labs focusing on RAG. Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) This was an intro level presentation on what RAG is and the concepts you need to know to create a RAG system.

Posted by Jason on Saturday, December 7, 2024

Azure SQL, Entity Framework, Semantic Kernel Hands-on-Lab

Announcing: Build a RAG App using Semantic Kernel, Entity Framework and Azure SQL DB Hands-on-Lab A couple of weeks ago after Azure SQL DB announced their public preview of native vector support, I put a hands on lab together to help people get started with the new feature and EF Core extension. Bill Wilder and I did mentioned it in our presentations on December 12 and December 15, but I haven’t had a chance to announce it for those of you who missed our presentations.

Posted by Jason on Monday, November 25, 2024

Virtual Boston Azure Lunchtime November 2024

Today at lunchtime Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were based on the same material we presented on Tuesday night, however I introduced eShopSupport as well today. The recording of the session can be found on the (Lunchtime editions) Boston Azure YouTube channel. Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL My part of the presentation PDF can be downloaded here.

Posted by Jason on Friday, November 15, 2024

Virtual Boston Azure November 2024

Last night Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were about adding GenAI to .NET applications. My portion was mostly demos that focused on Azure SQL’s new native VECTOR support, Entity Framework Core and Semantic Kernel. The recording of the session can be found on the Boston Azure YouTube channel. Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

Posted by Jason on Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Projects)

Last week I wrote about the notebook I created when I was working out the flow of the property graph RAG implementation. In this entry I will go through the two projects I created to provide some reusable code as well as allow for better experimentation: Related posts: Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Notebook) NOTE: In order to get the most out of this blog post, you should first read the related two posts.

Posted by Jason on Friday, August 16, 2024

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Notebook)

Monday I posted my notes on this last month’s study topic of property graph RAG, which has the general information I’ve collected. In this entry I want to go through some code I created in a polyglot notebook (ie. a notebook that has C# code instead of python), when I was working through the steps needed for a property graph RAG application. Related posts: Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Projects) Where To Get The Code The code for this entry is in my Github repo semantic-kernel-getting-started under the notebooks folder:

Posted by Jason on Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG

This past month I’ve been focusing on Graph RAG. This entry is an attempt to capture some lessons learned and a place to itemize all the resources I’ve found useful. Related posts: Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Notebook) Study Notes: Graph RAG - Property Graph RAG (The Projects) NOTE: My approach to this topic was to find a way to improve a typical RAG implementation that only uses vector similarity searching.

Posted by Jason on Monday, August 5, 2024

Study Notes: Text-to-SQL Code Sample

Yesterday I posted my notes from this week’s study topic of Text-to-SQL, which if you haven’t read it - provides more information and resources about the topic. In this entry I want to walk through a code sample I put together after playing with a few samples this week. Where To Get The Code The code for this entry is in my GitHub repo semantic-kernel-getting-started under the samples/demos/Text-to-Sql directory. Originally I considered making this a review of the NL2SQL code sample, but I ended up needing to make some changes to it, so I just copied over some of their code for my sample - that is why the nl2sql.

Posted by Jason on Saturday, July 6, 2024

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ai assistants api azd azure azure sql career chainlit container apps ef core entity framework core eshopsupport series evaluations function calling graph rag hands-on-lab langchain learning local rag series neo4j openai personal update presentation python rag rag demo series semantic kernel semantic kernel hello world series sql sql server study notes series text-to-sql vpn
ABOUT ME
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Jason is an experienced developer and solutions architect focused on helping companies provide real business value with custom software development using the Microsoft stack of technologies. This includes C#, .NET, Azure and AI services. In 2024, Jason was awarded a Microsoft MVP in AI - highlighting his latest focus on AI and specifically Generative AI technologies in real world business applications. The prior seven years, he was a Microsoft Azure MVP.

Let's work together to find solutions that fit your needs. Reach out today to discuss how I can support your goals—I'm here to help!

Jason Haley MVP