Figuring Out Fabric: Learn Fabric in 30 minutes.
Each week I’ll be interviewing experts and users alike on their experience with Fabric, warts and all. I can guarantee that we’ll have voices you aren’t used to and perspectives you won’t expect. Each episode will be 30 minutes long with a single topic, so you can listen during your commute or while you exercise. Skip the topics you aren’t interested in. This will be a podcast that respects your time and your intelligence. No 2 hour BS sessions.
Episodes
In this episode, Shannon Lindsay from the Microsoft Community team joins me to talk about, well, community! We talk about her trajectory from non-profit space, to Power BI developer, to Microsoft employee. We go over how social media is fragmented and the joy of finding your friends.
In this episode, Shabnam Watson talks about dealing with Fabric overwhelm and how her bureaucratic experiences with Azure and Synapse motivated her to learn Fabric. She talks about how it's important to focus on finding a way that works with the tool instead of finding the "best" way. In general, the best lesson is to find ways to tie your new learning. We also touch on the DP-600/DP-700 certifications.
In this episode, Microsoft MVP Prathy K talks about her journey into Microsoft Fabric from her MSBI background. She explains how Fabric felt like "coming home" since she could map SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS concepts to new tools. We discuss how medallion architecture is really just rebranded data warehousing layers and why Fabric can feel overwhelming if you haven't kept up with the big data world.
In this episode, Microsoft MVP Angela Henry asks me questions about Microsoft Fabric. We compare the current Fabric development timeline to the old Power BI development timeline. I talk about when Fabric makes the most sense, in my personal opinion. It was a surprise this episode to hear about SSRS.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab
- SVG images in Power BI (2018)
- Fabric Roadmap
In this episode, Juliana Smith talks about accessibility in Power BI. She talks about starting out as a data scientist and moving to Power BI. We talk about how impairments can be temporary or varied and how accessibility helps everyone. We discuss simple, low-effort changes like font sizes, labels, and color contrast.
In this episode, Heidi Hastings joins to discuss the practical realities of adopting Microsoft Fabric. We cover her early exposure to Fabric through the MVP preview, the challenges of understanding and implementing it across real-world projects, and the often-overlooked learning curve for newcomers.
Heidi shares insights into common misconceptions driven by marketing materials, gaps in documentation, and the difficulty of navigatin...
In this episode, Sukhwant Kaur the PM for SQL DBs in Fabric, talks about the new feature. She talks about how management is much easier, which is great for experimentation. SQL DBs are very popular for metadata pipelines and similar. It’s exciting as a way to enable writeback and curated data storage for Power BI. We also talked about AI features and workload management.
Links
In this episode, we talk with Emilie Rønning about notebooks. We talk about how notebooks can be used for data engineering and when to get started with them. One of the nice things about notebooks is that you can easily debug individual steps instead of having to search a whole script for an error. We also discuss when to learn notebooks. Near the end we talk about how exporting notebooks risks exfiltrating data.
Links
In this episode, Elayne Jones talks about being an expert reference for the IT Center of Excellence and about administering Fabric. We talk about the types of things that can be administered and some of the challenges.
In this episode, Meagan Longoria talks about Databricks and helps us compare it to Fabric. The general conclusions is Databricks is still the mature tool, but Fabric is making improvements.
In reality, there is space for a hybrid approach and if you have to start somewhere with Fabric, it likely makes sense to start with Power BI and work your way back, where this value. We also talk about how the way Fabric is structured can somet...
In this episode, Ewa Hutmacher talks about driving change and changing cultures in a organization. I think it’s fair to say that adjusting to Fabric and centralizing your data is a big organizational change. It was new to me to hear there are ways to track and monitor organizational change.
In this episode, Evelyn talks about getting certified in the Tableau and Power BI. We talk a little a bit about how each is different. For her, BI was an ideal career because it was in the middle of her two passions: art and IT. We also discuss getting her first job and studying for the PL-300.
- Ggplot2
- Kind and Wicked learning environments (regarding delayed feedback)
- Column profiler
T. from Data Rocks talks about how data viz is a tiny subset of information design. The key is to focus less on just charts, but more about how the data is communicated and received. We talk about how what the user does with it separates a pile of charts from a successful design flow. I found this conversation helpful to understand it means to be good at data viz.
Links
In this episode, Steph Locke covers a wild career from data science consultant to startup owner to Microsoft manager. We talk about what’s required to work in data science. We also talk about the interaction of large language models and coding. Finally, we talk about adjusting to Power BI and Fabric.
Links
In this episode with Ellen Burns-Johnson, we talk about when we worked on a cloud game for Azure Synapse, ADF, Power BI. A big lesson learned from that is a big challenge today for Fabric is getting different teams and personas to communicate with each other; it's not just about the technology. Ellen's first impression is "it seems like Microsoft is trying to 'product away' the communication layer".
Li...
In this Episode Els Van Vessem talks about the challenges of implementing Fabric in the government. In it they talk about doing proof of concepts with Fabric and the limitations when your data is confidential, protected and on-premises. Data sovereignty often means sticking to a hybrid approach. We also discuss the challenges of similarly named products with slight differences.
Links
Apologies for the audio; I stupidly forgot to double check my mic this episode.
In this episode, Erin Dempster gives us an outside view of fabric focused on CI/CD. We talk about both deployment pipelines and devops pipelines and how she uses both tools in concert. This episode is interesting because it touches on the challenges of integrating a variety of data sources for an insurance company and using CI/Cd to keep everything in sy...
In this episode, Stephanie Bruno talks about semantic link and semantic link labs, which allow you to better manage your Power BI resources with Fabric notebooks. Semantic allows you to query and work directly with your semantic model. Semantic Link Labs allows you to automate running the best practices analyzer against your model. I've heard nothing but great things about it.
Links
In this episode, Krystina Mishra talks about being an accidental Fabric admin. She talks about the challenges of being part of a centralized IT team that operational and business teams. She talks about the challenges of how everything with Dynamics 365 is slightly different than every other data source and how everything is convoluted with Synapse. She also talks about how there are nuanced differences between a P1 and an F64.
Links
...In this Episode, Frank Geisler explains Realtime Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. We learn how RTI is its own thing in Fabric and is not directly backed by Parquet like a Lakehouse is. We also dig into the distinction between real-time analytics and real-time intelligence. The latter is not just reporting but being able to trigger activity based on it.
Links
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.
"SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. A nice surprise: in each episode of SmartLess, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other two. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the SmartLess mind. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!