Since the release of my book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh, I’ve been fortunate to hear from readers around the world. One question I’ve received frequently is whether the … Continue reading →
What problem is Fabric Ontology trying to solve? For years, most data conversations have started with tables. We ask where the data lives, what columns are available, how the joins work, and whether the data is in a warehouse, lakehouse, … Continue reading →
Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is one of those technical ideas that sounds more complicated than it really is. The easiest way to think about it is this: MCP is to AI what USB was to hardware. Before USB became … Continue reading →
There’s a question I’ve been hearing more and more lately, especially as Copilot, Fabric, and Fabric data agents become part of everyday conversations with customers: will GenAI replace reports and dashboards? It’s a fair question, because on the surface they … Continue reading →
Once your Fabric tenant grows past a few workspaces, data discovery gets weird fast. Duplicates multiply. People stop trusting what they find. And security teams start hearing things like, “I think only the right people have access” (which is never … Continue reading →
A ton of new features for Microsoft Fabric were announced at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon Atlanta 26) last week (see the FabCon keynote here). There were 8000 attendees! Here are all the new data-related features that I found most interesting, … Continue reading →
I hosted this month’s T-SQL Tuesday invitation in which I asked, “What career risks have you taken?” I got some great responses which I’ll recap here, Career risks? Rob Farley Rob took an interesting angle on the idea of career … Continue reading →
In my recent blog post, Building Power BI Reports: Desktop vs Fabric, I talked about the evolving authoring experience in Microsoft Fabric and how report development is increasingly moving into the browser. But that conversation inevitably leads to another architectural … Continue reading →
I’m honored to be hosting T-SQL Tuesday — edition #196. For those who may not know the history, T-SQL Tuesday started back in December 2009 when Adam Machanic (Blog |LinkedIn) sent out the first invitation for what he called a monthly … Continue reading →
Why this comparison feels confusing If you’re a Power BI report author who’s just getting into Microsoft Fabric, you’ve probably asked the same question I hear over and over: am I supposed to stop using Power BI Desktop now? It’s … Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, I found myself staring at a slide full of new Microsoft AI names and thinking… wait a second. Work IQ. Fabric IQ. Foundry IQ. Agent 365. Agent Factory. And that’s before we even get into Copilot … Continue reading →
Organizations increasingly want Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric to coexist without duplicating data or fragmenting governance. With Fabric OneLake and open table formats like Iceberg and Delta, there are now multiple ways to make Snowflake data available inside Fabric—each with different … Continue reading →
I remember a meeting where a client’s CEO leaned in and asked me, “So, we have tons of data… Why can’t we just add AI and call it a day?” He was excited—who isn’t these days? But my team and … Continue reading →
Monitoring costs in Microsoft Fabric can be trickier than it first appears. You might assume it’s just a flat fee per capacity (easy, right?), but real-world usage tends to add complexity. Maybe you pause and resume a capacity, scale it … Continue reading →
Announced at Microsoft Ignite two weeks ago were many new product features related to the data platform. Check out the Major announcements and Book of News. I went through the many announcements and picked out the most interesting ones, so you don’t have to: Microsoft … Continue reading →
I had a great question asked of me the other day and thought I would turn the answer into a blog post. The question is “I’m an experienced DBA in SQL Server/SQL DB, and my company is looking to build … Continue reading →
I still see a lot of confusion about the functionality of Microsoft Purview ever since multiple products were combined into it, so I wanted to write this blog to help clear up that confusion. Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive solution … Continue reading →
A bunch of new features for Microsoft Fabric were announced at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon Vienna) recently. Here are all the new features that I found most interesting, with some released now and others coming soon: More info: FabCon Vienna: … Continue reading →
(Side note: Excited to share that the audio version of my book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh” is now accessible for those who prefer this format. The audio reader … Continue reading →
I want to talk about a fairly new product that you may not be aware of: Azure IoT Operations, which GA’d last November (it was first announced at Ignite in November 2023). Here is an excellent short video showing it … Continue reading →