Figuring Out Fabric: Learn Fabric in 30 minutes.

Santhana Lakshmi Ponnurasan and I worked together at Truviz a few years back, but this is our first real conversation since she became a two-time competitor in the Power BI DataViz World Championship and a recent Microsoft MVP. We talk about building reports people actually use versus passion projects, and why she crosses things off a requirements list instead of checking them off. Lakshmi walks through competing on stage at the DataViz Championship in Atlanta and what got her past the fear of speaking with an accent. We close on the Fabric community, her daily habit of scrolling and commenting, and her favorite and least favorite parts of Fabric right now.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/santhanalakshmip/
https://truviz.ai/
https://topmate.io/slakshmip 

Kellyn Gorman is back for a reappraisal, this time on AI. We get into how you're the product, not the customer: what "help improve our models" actually means, plus real stories of companies dumping loan PII and entire product roadmaps into free ChatGPT. Kellyn walks through her research on the AI bubble and what your data is actually worth. We close on Fabric's data protection push, Flyway's new AI features, and why the boring skills, Git, DevOps, architecture, are the ones AI can't replace.

Links:
Kellyn's blog, DBAKevlar
Kellyn Gorman on LinkedIn
Redgate Flyway AI services
Kellyn's posts on the Redgate blog
The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter

In this episode Aleksi Partanen about certifications, learning Fabric, and community. We talk about the Fabric certs and how much value they do or do not provide. We talk about community and motivations for being involved and cultivating communities.

YouTube: Aleksi Partanen – Master Microsoft Fabric
Fabric Forge: skool.com/fabricforge
CertiAce: certiace.com
Subreddit mentioned in the episode: r/MicrosoftFabric

Fatima Jallow, a data consultant based in Stockholm, helps us understand data movement in Fabric and when to use pipelines and dataflows. We talk about how pipelines specialize in orchestration. She shares with us her journey from executive assistant to data architect. Finally she talks about some challenges building a metadata-driven pipeline in Fabric from scratch.

Resources

• Feedly
• Fatima Jallow on LinkedIn
• Swedish Power BI & Fabric User Group
• Data Saturday Stockholm

Simon Sabin talks about how SQL Bits picks sessions when the data world keeps splintering into more tools. We talk about the tension between Fabric and the older stack people still use at work, and why session selection has to cover both. We also talk about why discernment is the skill you need with AI, since the model is an "automated idiot" and you have to catch when it's wrong. Power Query's declarative engine comes up too, along with the pub quizzes and board game nights SQL Bits runs so introverts can actually meet people.

Resources

• SQLBits
• Feedly
• Power BI MCP server
• Ben Gribaudo's Power Query training
• FabCon Vienna

Sandeep Pawar talks about Python notebooks in Microsoft Fabric and why Power BI developers should learn them. We talk about semantic link as the entry point for Power BI developers into Python, and how notebooks open up solutions for orchestration, monitoring, and administration that are hard to do any other way. We also talk about PySpark, and why understanding Spark internals matters just as much as writing the code.

Links

• Semantic link (Microsoft Fabric Python library)
• Dunder Data (Python and Pandas tutorials)
• Delta Lake: Up and Running (O'Reilly)
• fabric.guru (Sandeep Pawar's blog)
• Streamlit

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.

• Dunbar's number
• Understand translytical task flows
• Data Witches
• Microsoft Fabric Community

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.

• Analytics Engineering with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI (O'Reilly, early release)
• The Analytics Engineering Podcast (dbt Labs)
• Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen
• What is Copy Job in Data Factory
• Microsoft Exam Replay

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.

• Microsoft documentation on medallion architecture
• What is a lakehouse? (Databricks, 2020)
• Big Data or Pokemon? (circa 2013)
• Fabric Capacity Metrics app
• Fabric benchmarking loading CSV

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