Delta tables are the backbone of data storage in Microsoft Fabric. If you’re working with lakehouses, understanding Delta is essential. In this post, I’m going to explain what Delta tables are, why we need them, and how they work in Microsoft Fabric. This is part of a larger series where I’ll cover everything you need …
I see a lot of questions online about Microsoft Fabric reserved instances—on LinkedIn, Reddit, in chat groups. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about how they work and how they relate to Fabric capacities. So let’s clear this up. In this post, I’m going to explain what reserved instances are, how they …
Today I’m going to teach you how the Python merge statement works, and we use it a lot in Microsoft Fabric. This is very useful information if you’re a data engineer. If you’re considering moving into Microsoft Fabric, doing a Python merge statement in a notebook is super interesting. So let’s find out. What Is …
Merry Christmas from That Fabric Guy! I’m wearing my warm sweater because it’s getting cold outside, and it’s Christmas time. Christmas is all about sharing. And you know what else is all about sharing? Data. Today we’re going to learn how we can use Microsoft Fabric to share data with external parties. Let’s dive in. …
Today I’ll be diving deep into the Fabric Capacity Metrics app. With this Power BI app, you can find out what items in your Fabric capacity are using a lot of compute resources, and you’ll use this to find out what your spending baseline is. I’ve created another video on how Fabric is licensed and …
Today we’re going to look at Power BI on the Apple Watch. Now, why would you want to use Power BI on your Apple Watch? I have no idea. And we’re going to find out. The premise is that with your smartwatch, you have a device with a screen and an internet connection on you …
People almost always come up to me at conferences and ask, “Bas, you’re presenting Microsoft stuff and technology on a MacBook. Why do you do that?” The joke that I make is: I love Microsoft, but I also love hardware that works. My MacBook is simply the most amazing laptop I’ve ever had. And because …
Today I want to talk about task flows inside Microsoft Fabric—what they can be used for, how we can change them, how we can add them, and how we can make sense of our projects and make them a bit less messy. Let’s dive in and find out what tasks are all about. That Gray …
A couple of weeks ago, I showed you how we can use DuckDB as a Python library in Microsoft Fabric to do Python notebooks on Delta Lake instead of using Spark notebooks. The benefits of using Python over Spark: Python is more lightweight, your session startup times are much lower, and these notebooks use less …
Today I’m going into how you can set up the start of a metadata-driven processing framework for Microsoft Fabric. Let’s dive in. What Is Metadata-Driven Processing? Before we go into all the technicalities with the database setup and the Data Factory pipelines and notebooks, let’s first look at what metadata-driven processing actually is. Metadata is …
Can ChatGPT actually help you build a complete data platform in Microsoft Fabric if you pretend to know absolutely nothing? That’s exactly what I set out to test. I gave myself a simple scenario: I’m a data engineer with a SQL database that needs to be transformed into a proper medallion architecture with bronze, silver, …
Today I’m going to show you how you can use Python notebooks inside Microsoft Fabric together with DuckDB to speed up your query process on delta tables—and maybe save you some money because you won’t need to start a Spark cluster anytime you want to do some simple querying. I’ve never worked with DuckDB before …
Microsoft recently made a change that caught a lot of people off guard: they disabled V-Ordering by default for new Fabric lakehouses. If you’re using Power BI Direct Lake mode, this matters—a lot. V-Ordering can dramatically improve your query performance, but it comes with tradeoffs. Today I’m going to show you how to check if …
Did you know you can create Power BI semantic models directly from the Fabric web portal? No Power BI Desktop required. This is a game-changer if you’re working on a MacBook, dealing with a locked-down corporate laptop, or just prefer working in the browser. Today I’m going to show you how to create a semantic …
Lakehouses are the foundation of data engineering in Microsoft Fabric. They’re where you store your raw data, your transformed tables, and everything in between. But if you’re new to Fabric, lakehouses can be a bit confusing. What’s the difference between tables and files? What are shortcuts? How do you actually work with the data once …
There’s a common debate in the Fabric community: should you use low-code tools like Dataflows Gen2, or should you write pro-code solutions with PySpark notebooks? Today I’m going to settle this debate with actual performance and cost data. Spoiler alert: low-code is easier, but you’re paying for that convenience with significantly higher compute costs. Let …
Fabric Data Agents are really cool. You can talk to your data. You don’t need to have a pre-built dashboard anymore—you can just chat with your data model. And the best part? I can show you how to set this up and actually use it. Let’s dive in. Setting Up Your Semantic Model For this …
I recently ran into a sneaky issue while migrating a customer from SQL Server to Microsoft Fabric. We were doing what every lazy developer does—copy-pasting code—and suddenly our joins stopped working. Half the data was missing, relationships weren’t connecting, and it took me way too long to figure out why. The culprit? Case sensitivity. SQL …
Recently, Microsoft came out with a private preview for OneLake Security in Microsoft Fabric lakehouses. This is amazing, it is a feature I have been waiting for now for a long time. The promise with Fabric would be that security in the most detailed grain (both row-level and column-level) would be implemented in OneLake. However, …
Materialized Lake Views in Fabric lakehouses are a very cool option to start introducing data virtualisation patterns within Microsoft Fabric. In today’s post I will show you how you can create MLVs and how you can manage them. Views vs Tables Let’s get this out of the way first. What is the difference between a …
Perhaps I’m somewhat late to the party, however, last Saturday I found something that really helps me as a data engineer working with Microsoft Fabric. Because the most annoying thing ever is having a Spark session in your notebook, going for a lunch walk, then coming back to a timed out session having to start …
By now, everyone and their mother has heard about AI. It is the greatest technological revolution of our times. And we can do so much with AI, it’s amazing! Today, I want to demonstrate how I use AI copilots for Microsoft Fabric to help me write better code faster. Note: none of the links in …
When you’re using PySpark notebooks in Microsoft Fabric data engineering, you can develop straight from the web browser. While that is interesting, a browser is usually not the most perfect software development environment. In this article I will show you how you can use VS Code Notebooks to develop for Microsoft Fabric. Why Use VS …
Introduction to Delta Lake Liquid Clustering As your Delta tables grow in size, the need for performance tuning in Microsoft Fabric becomes essential. In this post, I’ll explore two powerful optimisation techniques — Delta Lake Partitioning and Liquid Clustering. Both can help improve query speed and reduce costs, but they work in very different ways. …
When managing large-scale data lakes with Microsoft Fabric, performance optimisation becomes crucial. One effective technique to achieve better performance is Delta Lake partitioning. Partitioning can significantly enhance query performance, reduce computational costs, and improve data management efficiency within Microsoft Fabric environments. In this blog post, we will explore what Delta Lake partitioning is, how it …
Understanding the cost implications of implementing Microsoft Fabric is crucial for organisations transitioning to this unified analytics platform. This guide explores the fundamentals of Fabric’s billing model, helping you make informed decisions about resource allocation and cost management. Microsoft Fabric costs is a difficult topic, apparently, let’s make it a bit more understandable! The Basics …
Most APIs these days will have some kind of pagination built into them. This is to make sure that queries against the underlying database are not returning too much data, compromising the database performance as well as sending too large messages across the network. Often, these APIs will tell you in their responses how many …
When we start implementing a data lake using Microsoft Fabric, we might be tempted to start creating pipelines and notebooks right away, without thinking about design principles. However, there’s one design principle I’d like you to consider from the beginning: DRY. DRY is an acronym that stands for Don’t Repeat Yourself. In this blog post, …
Coming from the ‘old school’ world of SSIS and SQL Server, and later Azure Data Factory and Azure SQL Database, I have always built my ETL orchestration processes using some kind of pipelines. In Fabric, we also have pipelines (the successor of ADF), but, we can now also create notebook orchestration using NotebookUtils and runMultiple(). …
In Microsoft Fabric data engineering, we use Spark to apply transformations to our data. Just like you would write T-SQL to transform data in SQL Server, you would write PySpark or SparkSQL to transform data in a Fabric lakehouse. There are a lot of parallels between Spark en SQL in the way you can process …
Introduction In this guide, we’ll dive straight into the practical steps of how to implement Medallion Lakehouses using Microsoft Fabric. If you’re unfamiliar with the Medallion Architecture, or need a refresher, check out our previous post on the theory behind the Medallion Architecture. This post focuses on hands-on implementation, guiding you through each step of …
The medallion architecture is maybe the most important concept to grasp when you start building lakehouse solutions on Microsoft Fabric. Data products should never be built ‘right away’ or on their own. There’s a structure and process to follow. Luckily, we don’t have to figure out that structure by ourselves. Rather, I’d suggest using what …