Azure Data and Power BI News (April 2023)

April... I love this month! Lots of celebration moments in my private life. Also, an opportunity to cherish my current job on the product team (joined the team in April last year). And, last but not least, the spring is all around, making the world green and warm, inviting for running and cycling activities. Honestly, when April comes, I don't want to sit at my laptop ;-) But still, there are so many fascinating things going on in technology, that I just can't stop. Let's then move to my subjective summary of what's new in Azure Data and Power BI for April.

Azure Data

• Traditionally, let me start with Azure Synapse Analytics. In the April Update we got a few new features including Low Shuffle Merge optimization on Delta tables and data ingestion from Azure Event Hubs to free tier of Data Explorer.
• The big news for data science fans working with Azure Synapse was a new release of SynapseML (v0.11) with cool features such as OpenAIPrompt API which makes it super easy to construct complex LLM prompts from columns of a dataframe, Simple deep learning?package that allows for the training of custom text and deep vision classifiers with only a few lines of code, and?the new ONNX model hub, which is an open collection of state-of-the-art pre-trained ONNX models that can be quickly downloaded and embedded into spark pipelines.
• One more great resource for Synapse users - do not miss the latest episodes of Synapse Espresso - Spark (episodes 7-9) series with Stijn Wynants and Estera Kot, PhD which allow you to learn Synapse Spark from zero to hero!
• Azure SQL Manage Instance fans - be aware of two nice features being generally available after April: the link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance for hybrid connectivity with SQL Server 2016 and 2019 and CETAS feature that can be used to export data from local database tables into parquet and CSV files in Azure storage and creates external tables for easy querying of the exported data through data virtualization.
• An important GA also for one feature of Azure SQL - now you can configure auditing for Azure SQL database using user managed identity. Besides, there are two new features in public preview - database-level transparent data encryption (TDE) with customer-managed keys and cross-tenant transparent data encryption (TDE) with customer-managed keys.
• In April I had less time for reading, but the community was active as always. Some of my readings last month: three blog posts - Allow Azure Services and resources to access this server – How it works in Azure SQL Database?, Using variables in loops in Data Factory – why it’s not worth it and Delta Lake 101 Part 2: Transaction Log by Adrian Chodkowski (Microsoft MVP), two blog posts - Install SqlPackage to work with dacpacs for serverless SQL Pools and Spreading your SQL Server wings with Azure SQL Database by Kevin Chant (Microsoft MVP), a blog post Synapse snack - Increment counter variable by Joost van Rossum (Microsoft MVP).
• My 2 cents last month - a session for DBAVUG titled Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI Datamarts – Better Together.

Power BI

• Am I the only one who thinks April was a huge month for Power BI, full of massive updates? Starting from the Power BI April 2023 Update - we got some really nice new features and important GAs including dynamic format strings for measures (use DAX to define how your measures will be formatted!), tooltip auto-scale based on the canvas size, item's code changes visible in Deployment Pipelines, the GA for composite models on Power BI Datasets and Analysis Services models.
• But that's not all! The Power BI team announced public preview of the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL). TMDL is a human readable format (a YAML-like syntax) in which each tabular metadata object has a textual representation with minimal delimiters. Indentation is used to indicate parent-child relationships between objects. TMDL offers a better editing experience, especially for properties containing DAX and M expressions. Another advantage of this format is a standard folder output format where each model object has an individual file representation (instead of one big .bim file!), making TMDL more source control friendly well suited for collaboration. Exciting times for Power BI CI/CD are coming!
• And guess what... Yes! That's still not all! Now you can give it a try (public preview) and edit your data model in the Power BI Service! This is huge for all data modelers willing to work on non-Windows devices (MacBooks!) because they will not be forced to use Power BI Desktop on Windows to edit their data models in the future!
• Last but not least - Python geeks now can create Power BI reports in Jupyter Notebooks. How cool is that, huh!?
• Seeing so many great updates in April and constantly growing Power BI community I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft was named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner? Magic Quadrant? for Analytics and BI Platforms. For the 16th time in a row. Massive!
• Speaking about the Power BI community - here are some of my last month's readings: a blog post + video Optimizing SWITCH on slicer selection with Group By Columns by Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari (both Microsoft MVPs), a blog post Parallel Loading of Tables with Power BI & Azure Synapse Analytics by Andy Cutler (Microsoft MVP), three blog posts - Why load testing Power BI is important (learn about tools and methods for load testing), Measuring memory and CPU usage in Power BI during dataset refresh and Understanding WaitTime in Power BI (two blogs with internal tips on monitoring Power BI workspaces using Profiler) by Chris Webb (Microsoft), two blog posts - How to unlock new features in Power BI datasets managed with Tabular Editor and How to manage “Reporting Objects” in a Power BI Dataset (I just love the way these goblins present things visually!) by Kurt Buhler (Microsoft MVP), a blog post A nice background always, with the minimum effort (for all fans of beautiful reports) by Bernat Agulló Roselló (Microsoft MVP), two LinkedIn articles - Hybrid tables in Power BI: extending beyond time-related scenarios! and Cache me if you can! Understanding different cache types in Power BI - by Nikola Ilic (Microsoft MVP) and a blog post Simplifying Security Replication in Power BI: A Step-by-Step Guide by Marc Lelijveld (Microsoft MVP).

As always, you can find all the official announcements for Azure and Power BI on the?Azure Updates website?and the?Power BI blog. Also, you can be up to date with Azure Synapse by tracking?monthly update blog?and with Power BI thanks to the?Power BI Release Plan?report.

If you're still reading this article, let me give you one good advice: do not miss the Microsoft Build conference (May 23-25)! You don't want to miss it, I'm telling you ;-)

I hope to meet you (in person or virtually) at SQLDay 2023 or MS Tech Summit! Let me know if you're coming to any of these events and we can have a chat on any topic related to data or community :-)

That's all folks! Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this issue of my newsletter. Have an awesome May and until the next one!