RAG on Jason Haley

My Session at Boston Code Camp 40

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday was Boston Code Camp 40, hard to believe it is still going after all these years. We had a good turn out too!

I presented “Agentic RAG”, which was very similar to the session I presented at the Memphis AgentCamp a couple of weeks ago. Due to all the traveling I’ve done since then, I didn’t have a lot of time to update it.

Agentic RAG

It was nice to have an in person group of attendees, so I was able to tailor the content to spend more time on what they wanted. I spent more time on the basics of RAG than Agentic RAG this time.

My Session at Memphis AgentCamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today is Memphis AgentCamp - you still have time to catch some sessions! The schedule is here: Schedule.

As always Doug Starnes did a fantastic job organizing a multi-track conference. I’m always impressed at how well he organizes his events.

I presented “Agentic RAG”, which was a long form of the session I presented at the Agent Framework Dev in January. This one was all new code too.

Agentic RAG

The presentation was a quick overview of traditional RAG and focused on using agent framework to build Agentic RAG.

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample - IT Support Ticket Search

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Agentic RAG Python Sample – IT Support Ticket Search

A Python sample demonstrating how to build an agentic, multi-agent RAG system using Microsoft’s Agent Framework

I finally finished up the code for the Agentic RAG sample that has been a long time in the making … it will answer all the question types I’ve been after for awhile now:

These were inspired by the https://github.com/amazon-science/mintaka project that I discovered a long time ago.

Hands-on Agent Framework Workshop Jan 2026

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Udai Ramachandran and I held the first In-person, hands-on, all-day, free. Agent Framework Dev Day in BURLINGTON MA for the year. This year, we targeted both .NET and python developers (last year we only focused on .NET).

My presentation and labs focused on implementing Agentic RAG with Agent Framework.

Talk: Agentic RAG

NOTE: The repository has moved to the new Agent Framework Dev Day github.

About the Lab

This year I tried to stay away from the instructional labs that just turns into a treasure hunt, copy paste set of instructions … though not completely.

My Session at Boston Code Camp 39

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past Saturday was Boston Code Camp 39 (fall edition). For those of you who don’t know, the Boston Code Camp is the one that started it all (back in 2004) - see wikipedia for more info … at this point it may also be the last remaining one (not sure.).

I got to visit with many old friends that I mostly just see at Code Camp these days … many of which I met at a code camp some time in the past 20+ years. I did not get to attend any sessions due to taking the time to catch up with people instead.

Agentic RAG Chronicles

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series)

Last year I chronicled several RAG Demos with the idea I would have a documented place to return to when I was looking for specify RAG features. Having those demos documented and all the reference links in one location really was useful for me - so I am going to do the same thing this year, but with Agentic RAG components.

Agentic RAG

Last year when I was learning RAG, that technique became known as Standard RAG or Semantic RAG. At its core, it’s a system that uses semantic search—understanding meaning rather than just matching keywords—to find relevant information, then feeds that information to an LLM to answer a user’s question. When you first build one of these systems, the results feel almost magical. But it doesn’t take long before you encounter questions the system can’t answer using semantic search alone.

Hands-on Boston AgentCon Workshop

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past Saturday, I held my latest hands on workshop: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence at AgentCon Boston. I ended up with around 30 attendees. There was quite a bit of interaction, with some real practical questions being asked about RAG and GenAI applications.

Hand-on-Lab: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence

The repository is located at: https://github.com/JasonHaley/agentcon-boston-workshop

What is it?

The end result (which is the “completed” branch of the repo), is a Chainlit application designed to provide four use cases:

My Session at Boston Global AI Bootcamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Azure AI’s Edition of the Global AI Bootcamp at the NERD in Cambridge.

We had a lot of interest in the event - 85 people on the RSVP list and almost that on the waitlist. Since the space we had couldn’t handle any more people, unfortunately we couldn’t let more people in. However since there was such good interest in a Saturday AI oriented bootcamp, we are working on planning another one soon - so if you happen to be one of those people that couldn’t attend - stay tuned!

Hands-on AI Workshop Jan 2025

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I had the second Hands-on AI Workshop - this time in Cambridge MA. Like the last time, the goal was to give the attendees a hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code looking to learn GenAI.

My presentation and labs focused on RAG.

Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

I made a few small changes since the December workshop, mostly in the part where I discuss chunking.

A Semantic Kernel Workshop

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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: .NET developers looking to start using Gen AI in their applications

Hands-on AI Workshop Dec 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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. The presentation can be downloaded on the github here

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

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Boston Code Camp 37 Session

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Code Camp 37. I spent the majority of the day talking with people in the community I haven’t seen for awhile, as well as some new people I hadn’t met before. I only made it to one session (Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez - Agentic AI: Unlocking the Power of Multi-Agent Systems), which was good and got me thinking about how to rewrite my demos in my talk to use agents.

Techbash 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I presented at the TechBash conference in Pocono Manor, PA. All the resources for the conference are available on the TechBash GitHub repo. Below are links to my presentations specifically.

It was great to see companies sending their employees to conferences again. This was my first time at TechBash, and I finally got to meet Alvin Ashcraft in person (the Morning Dew). I also met a bunch of people from the Philly area and around Pennsylvania, but there were attendees from all over-even a couple of guys from Panama!

Wisconsin .NET User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Wisconsin .NET User Group near Milwaukee, WI. I was nice to meet so many .NET developers interested in RAG and AI.

To carry on the tradition from my Memphis talk, I gave the presentation a local look using images related to Milwaukee generated from Bing/create.

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

One of my demos failed to deploy before the talk, but I don’t think it was missed due to having so many good questions. It was really nice meeting a user group with so many core members. Plus the pizza was really good!

Boston Azure June 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was the Season of AI presentation. We started with Bill Wilder presenting the fundamentals of Generative AI and quick introduction to Azure AI Studio, then I finished up with a .NET code walkthrough implement Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) using Semantic Kernel.

It was nice to see a lot of regular faces and meet several new people.

Demo Code

The demo code is on my GitHub repo BostonAzure-June2024 under a subdirectory.

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

This is the fifth C# demo in The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series) and has the most extensive use of Semantic Kernel out of all the demos I’ve reviewed.

The use of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is different with this project than the other demos I’ve reviewed - mainly because RAG is just one of its features.

With this demo, I also took the time to configure the optional authentication so I could play with the MS Graph plugin … and WOW! Just adding the web searcher and MS Graph plugin really make this a powerful demo app. It gives me a lot of ideas for my own projects.

Memphis Azure User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Memphis Azure User Group, it was nice to meet some people in person and see how excited others are about finding valuable ways to work GenAI into their applications.

I also gave my slide deck a completely new look (Memphis themed via Bing/create):

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

Since the presentation was hybrid, there were not as many questions as the other two times I’ve given the talk … or that is my guess at the reason why it was so quiet. That also means I should have put that third demo back in the presentation (I took a demo out after the first version of the talk since there were so many questions and needed to free up time for Q&A). Next time I’ll have it ready to use in case I need it.

My Session at Boston Global Azure Bootcamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past weekend was Boston Azure’s Edition of the annual Global Azure Bootcamp. This year we focused on AI and hands-on-labs.

The odd thing about when we scheduled the meetup was we had a lot of people sign up for the group just to rsvp - before most of the existing members had gotten around to rsvp’ing. We did not expect that. It is a mystery as how they heard about the event so quick. We only had one room reserved, so there really was a hard cap on how many people we could let in.

Boston Code Camp 36 Sessions

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Code Camp 36 hard to believe it has been going on for 20+ years now. For me it is one of those regular events for the Boston tech community that is well worth spending a Saturday attending.

It was nice to see a lot of regular faces and meet some new people.

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

I was surprise the room was full, it was good to see so many developers, students and architects - mostly with .NET backgrounds looking to get started with RAG applications.

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

This is the fourth C# demo in The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series) and is the first demo so far that saves its history to a database.

This Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) demo is a little different than the last three because it primarily uses data from a database as the content to search instead of documents. It also uses Semantic Kernel more than other demos have, which is neat to see too.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

This is the last in the family of Azure Search OpenAI demos that I’m covering (I’m not looking at the Java version). I reviewed the C# version and the Javascript/Typescript version earlier this month. Of the three I’m covering, this one seems to be the most active, popular and have the most documentation.

At the beginning of this month, the Hack Together: The AI Chat App Hack used this demo at the sample repository, marking it as a solid reference implementation for RAG.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

This is the second in the family of Azure Search OpenAI demos that I’m reviewing. Last week I reviewed the C# version. As you’ll see below, the Javascript version is a bit different.

The user interface (UI) functionality is provided by a set of web components that you can add to about any web application (ie. React, Angular, Vue, etc.) - in fact the web application in the demo is written in React. Also the chat communication is written to match the HTTP protocol for AI chat app which means the frontend can communicate with any backend that matches that protocol.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

If you are looking for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) demos that utilize Azure Search and Azure OpenAI (along with several other supporting Azure services), then there is a set of related demos that do just that in GitHub.

This family of RAG demos consists of:

azure-search-openai-demo-csharp - written in C#.
azure-search-openai-demo - written in python.
azure-search-openai-javascript - written in javascript/typescript.
azure-search-openai-demo-java - written in java.

This post is about #1 above, I will cover #2 and #3 in later posts, but I will leave the Java version to someone else to review.

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server, OpenAI and Function Calling

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server, Azure OpenAI and Function Calling

If you are like me, a full stack C# developer who is attempting to get up to speed on how GenAI technologies are going to show up in our business applictions - then after you get the first demo up and running, this demo (also by Michael Washington) is a great next step.

RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) applications typically have the following steps:

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server and OpenAI

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server and Azure OpenAI

Are you a full stack C# developer attempting to get up to speed on all this GenAI stuff? Are you typically a relational database developer (ie. SQL Server) wondering what all the hoopla is around vector databases and more importantly how all this stuff relates to some type of functionaly that you have a chance at really using in your day-to-day work? Oh and you probably have not had time to dig into this pattern named Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) due to being too busy implementing web application or service code.

RAG Demo Chronicles

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing: The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series)

In my last blog entry I mentioned how I’ve been spending a lot of time learning AI related topics lately. Recently the newest research topic is RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). The more I learn about RAG, the more I am convinced it is how my clients will be able to take advantage of GenAI in the short term.

For those of you who are not familiar with the topic, you may have heard a presentation or blog focusing on “How to Chat with Your Documents” or something along those lines - these are usually about RAG. The idea is an application that is like ChatGPT but only looks at your data and documents.