Fabric Influencers Spotlight July 2024
About this blog series
Introducing the Fabric Influencers Spotlight. This is the first of a recurring monthly post here to shine a bright light on the places on the internet where Microsoft MVPs & Fabric Super Users are doing some amazing work on all aspects of Microsoft Fabric.
The Microsoft Fabric Community team has created the Fabric Influencers Spotlight to highlight and amplify blog posts, videos, presentations, and other content related to Microsoft Fabric. We’ve cultivated submissions from members of Microsoft MVPs & Fabric Super Users from the Fabric community that cover the Fabric Platform, Data Engineering & Data Science in Fabric, Data Warehousing, Power BI, Real-Time Intelligence, Data Integration, Fabric Administration & Governance and Databases.
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who utilize their deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services to bring together diverse platforms, products, and solutions, to solve real world problems, and to bring “leading edge” content to the data community. To learn about the Microsoft MVP Award and to find MVPs, visit the official website: https://mvp.microsoft.com/.
Fabric Super Users are the heroes of the Fabric Community. They contribute helpful answers, write informative blog posts, post data stories and are key contributors to the Fabric product via engagement with the product group. To learn more about becoming a Fabric Super User, visit our most recent post: What is the Fabric Super User program?
Introductory
Thomas LaRock, @SQLRockstar, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Microsoft Fabric is the New Office
https://thomaslarock.com/2024/07/microsoft-fabric-is-the-new-office/
Description: Microsoft Fabric is the new Office – it is a bundle of data products, meant to boost productivity for data professionals and dominate the data analytics landscape. Much in the same way Office dominates the business world.
Maria Zakourdaev, @Maria_SQL, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Unlocking Microsoft Fabric: A Simple Guide when you only have a personal account
https://blamblogger.blogspot.com/2024/07/unlocking-microsoft-fabric-simple-guide.html
Description: Trying to set up Microsoft Fabric and your Azure subscription is tightened to your personal account? With this workaround in hand, setting up your Microsoft Fabric capacity should now be straightforward and hassle-free!
John Savill, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft FTE
Microsoft Fabric Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbxVsi94DrE
Description: A walk-through Microsoft Fabric and what makes it so powerful for organizations.
Data Warehouse
Steve Hughes, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Fabric 5 -Table Clones
https://youtu.be/2k4hw_L82vU
Description: In this video, we discuss table clones in Fabric warehouse and how they can be used for audits, compliance, and account balances.
Andy Cutler, MrAndyCutler, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
The Reality of ALTER TABLE… in Fabric Warehouses
https://www.serverlesssql.com/the-reality-of-alter-table-in-fabric-warehouses-2/
Description: With the recent release of “ALTER TABLE…ADD column” support for Fabric Warehouses we can now extend existing tables. Let’s dive-in to this functionality as there’s much more going on behind the scenes.
Reza Rad, @rad_reza, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Copilot in Fabric Data Warehouse: Magic in T-SQL
https://radacad.com/copilot-in-fabric-data-warehouse-magic-in-t-sql
Description: Microsoft Copilot is utilized in different technologies in Microsoft; in Microsoft Fabric, one of the places that you can use Copilot is in the Data Warehousing workload, which will guide you through your SQL commands and enhance your SQL coding experience. I’ll show you how the Copilot in the Data Warehouse works in this article and video.
Power BI
Rita Fainshtein, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP & Fabric Super User
A Post About Love for Tea, Pies, and Waffles from the Matrix
https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Community-Blog/A-Post-About-Love-for-Tea-Pies-and-Waffles-from-the-Matrix/ba-p/4005411
Description: The post discusses the issues with using pie charts. It proposes solutions and provides step-by-step instructions on how to create a waffle chart in POWER BI.
Gregor Brunner, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Fabric Super User
Benefits of using DAX INFO() functions instead of the DMVs via the XMLA endpoint in Power BI
https://en.brunner.bi/post/benefits-of-using-dax-info-functions-instead-of-the-xmla-endpoint-in-power-bi
Description: The blog post outlines some benefits of replacing DMV queries to the XMLA endpoint with the newly released DAX INFO() functions. One limitation we can overcome like this is that we need Premium workspaces. The DAX INFO() functions work in Pro workspaces as well.
Ilgar Zarbaliyev, @IlgarZ, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP & Fabric Super User
Dynamic X-Axis in Power BI: Enhancing Your Data Visualizations
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dynamic-x-axis-power-bi-enhancing-your-data-visualizations-kz21e/?trackingId=ueA%2FOG%2BbQFSasklPamtSug%3D%3D
Description: In this newsletter, you’ll learn how to create a dynamic X-axis in Power BI to make your data visualizations more flexible and interactive. We’ll walk through the process using sales data from Excel, and you’ll have access to two Power BI files: one for exploring the concept and another with the complete solution. Enhance your reporting skills by mastering this technique to better analyze and present your data insights.
Bernat Agulló, @AgulloBernat, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
C# Scripting the report layer with Tabular Editor
https://www.esbrina-ba.com/c-scripting-the-report-layer-with-tabular-editor/
Description: C# Scripting the report layer with Tabular Editor has been impossible for a long time. However, with the arrival of PBIR (still in preview!) things have changed. This blog post walks you through a first use case, but the same approach can be used for much more complex use cases.
Data Engineering
Ignacio Barrau, @ignacho_07, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Leer PowerBI data con Notebooks, article posted in Spanish
https://blog.ladataweb.com.ar/post/756176281768542208/fabric-leer-powerbi-data-con-notebooks
Description: Original post/article in Spanish. El nombre del artículo puede sonar extraño puesto que va en contra del flujo de datos que muchos arquitectos pueden pensar para el desarrollo de soluciones. Sin embargo, las puertas a nuevos modos de conectividad entre herramientas y conjuntos de datos pueden ayudarnos a encontrar nuevos modos que fortalezcan los análisis de datos.
En este post vamos a mostrar dos sencillos modos que tenemos para leer datos de un Power BI Semantic Model desde un Fabric Notebook con Python y SQL.
Reitse Eskens, @2meterDBA, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Microsoft Fabric Dataflow Gen2: In-depth Performance Evaluation and Capacity Insights
https://sqlreitse.com/2024/07/04/microsoft-fabric-dataflow-gen2-in-depth-performance-evaluation-and-capacity-insights/
Description: This blog will focus on the dataflow Gen2. It describes some use cases and focuses on the performance and capacity usage when running it as is. It will then show what happens when the engineer turns on the fast copy option, again showing the impact on performance and capacity usage.
Jihwan Kim, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Creating Field Parameter in Direct Lake mode Semantic Model in Fabric
https://jihwankimcscp.wixsite.com/supplychainflow/post/creating-field-parameter-in-direct-lake-mode-semantic-model-in-fabric
Amit Chandak, @amitchandak78, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP & Fabric Super User
Microsoft Fabric Notebooks: Essential PySpark Functions and Commands
https://medium.com/microsoft-power-bi/microsoft-fabric-notebooks-essential-pyspark-functions-and-commands-07a9f77035ab
Description: This blog focuses on some essential functions and commands needed for data analysis. These include understanding your data, joining DataFrames, grouping, and analyzing DataFrame data.
Data Science
Paul PETON, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Mastering ML model logs in Microsoft Fabric
https://medium.com/@paul-peton/mastering-ml-model-logs-in-microsoft-fabric-7235fa07b852
Description: Microsoft has therefore also integrated MLFlow into the Fabric platform. And to simplify its use, it’s not even necessary for the MLFlow session to trigger log tracking! However, it may be useful to define training sessions and the elements (parameters and metrics) that you want MLFlow to record.
Developer
Gerhard Brueckl, @gbrueckl, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Introducing Fabric Studio
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GerhardBrueckl.fabricstudio
Description: Fabric Studio is a VSCode extension that allows you to manage your whole Fabric tenant and allows you to modify existing items (notebooks, semantic models, reports, …) directly from VSCode.
Kevin Chant, @kevchant, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Initial tests of GitHub support for Microsoft Fabric Git integration
Description: Covers the results of my initial tests of GitHub support for Microsoft Fabric Git integration. Along the way I share plenty of links and some advice.
Real-time Intelligence
Mohammed Adnan, @Mohammedadnant, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Fabric Lab 11 Get Started with Eventstream in Microsoft Fabric
Description: One of a series of videos that mainly focused on Power BI & Real-Time Intelligence in Fabric.
Learning & Certification
Nikola Ilic, @DataMozart, LinkedIn
Affiliation: Microsoft MVP
Mastering DP-600 Exam: DAX For The Win Part 2 – Window Functions and Information Functions
Description: Continuing our “DAX for DP-600” journey, let’s introduce two very powerful group of functions – Window and Information functions. Window functions enable calculations over a subset of rows, whereas Information functions provide useful info about the Power BI semantic model
That’s all for this month’s spotlight on the Microsoft Fabric Influencers. We wanted to extend our thanks to the MVPs and Super Users whose expertise continues to enrich the Fabric community. We anticipate the innovative ideas and valuable insights that will emerge in the coming months and invite everyone to stay engaged here on the Fabric Community Platform. Together, we will continue to deliver knowledge and collaboration that empowers every member of our community to achieve more. Stay tuned!
