22-25 April 2026 
Branching strategies 101 for data professionals
Proposed session for SQLBits 2026TL; DR
A hands‑on crash‑course that shows data pros—DBAs, developers, and BI engineers—how to use Git‑style branching to version‑control code, datasets, and models. You’ll learn to spin up, merge, and prune branches so collaboration, experimentation, and releases stay tidy and risk‑free.
Session Details
Whether you’re a DBA, developer, or BI analyst, mastering branching is the secret sauce for safe, collaborative data work.
In this interactive session we’ll demystify the fundamentals of branch creation, merging, and deletion, then dive into the three workhorse strategies—feature, release, and hot‑fix branches.
Using Git as our playground, you’ll get hands‑on experience building and managing separate versions of code, datasets, and models without ever stepping on the main line.
We’ll wrap up with some best practices and tips to keep your data projects organized, reproducible, and ready for rapid iteration and deployment.
In this interactive session we’ll demystify the fundamentals of branch creation, merging, and deletion, then dive into the three workhorse strategies—feature, release, and hot‑fix branches.
Using Git as our playground, you’ll get hands‑on experience building and managing separate versions of code, datasets, and models without ever stepping on the main line.
We’ll wrap up with some best practices and tips to keep your data projects organized, reproducible, and ready for rapid iteration and deployment.
3 things you'll get out of this session
Explain core branching concepts
Identify common branching patterns
Apply Git commands to real‑world data‑project scenarios
Adopt best‑practice tips for clean, conflict‑free workflows across code, data, and model pipelines.
Speakers
Karim Ourtani's other proposed sessions for 2026
AI-Assisted T-SQL: Hello GitHub Copilot in SSMS - 2026
Implementing Feature Flags in Databases for Dynamic Product Management - 2026