Azure Data and Power BI News (August 2023)

The summer vacation period is over. I had some great time off, being disconnected (no laptop, no calls) and enjoying the beauty of nature. I'm sharing with you one of my memories (see the photo above).

So, what was going on in Microsoft data and analytics world in August? Here's my subjective list.

Microsoft

• Microsoft Fabric July 2023 Update. A massive update to Fabric with tons of useful features, e.g.: OneLake File Explorer 1.0.9 (now you can switch between different AAD accounts), dbt support in warehouses, Notebook Resources (keep useful code blocks and files under your fingerprints for re-use when developing notebooks), new OpenAI APIs in SynapseML library, Teams activity and artifact parameterization in data pipelines.
• In separate announcements on the Fabric blog we got XMLA write support for Direct Lake datasets , service principal support to connect to data in Dataflow, Datamart, Dataset and Dataflow Gen 2 (big thing to make connections to data sources more secure by using dedicated identities) and high concurrency mode in Notebooks (you can run multiple notebooks using a single Spark session now).

• Couple of useful Microsoft Fabric related blog posts from my peers on the official Microsoft blogs: Metadata Driven Pipelines for Microsoft Fabric , Accessing Microsoft Fabric for developers, startups and enterprises! , (how to set up Fabric environment for a developer), Learn Live: Get started with Microsoft Fabric (a calendar of free Learn Live events).
• Do not miss several new awesome Fabric Espresso videos: two episodes - Performance at Scale with Microsoft Fabric: Query Optimizations! and Performance at Scale with Microsoft Fabric: Concurrency! - by Stijn Wynants and Bogdan Crivat , three episodes - Data Science in Microsoft Fabric – Data preparation and exploration with Data Wrangler , Enabling Data Mesh with OneLake on Microsoft Fabric and Spark Compute in Fabric Data Engineering and Data Science - Starter Pools vs Custom Pools Unveiled! - by Estera Kot, PhD and her guests.

• Big news for Microsoft Purview fans! The free version of Purview , the new Purview portal and ONE account per tenant (with account upgrade option) are here!

• A small update for SQL developers, especially those performing migrations of on-premises SQL Server to Azure. There is a Public Preview of the new Azure Portal experience for Azure Database Migration Service .
• Power BI August 2023 Feature Summary . Some nice features and improvements for Power BI there, including new layout switcher (now you can easily set things up for a mobile app), automatic replica synchronization for dataset scale-out, start-up content for mobile app.
• In separate announcements for Power BI we also got dynamic subscriptions for paginated reports , automatic scaling for dataset scale-out and easy data labeling with the new sensitivity bar .
• From Power BI let's switch to... Excel! Yeah, you read me well, Excel :-) Because we've just got Python in Excel announced . Now you can manipulate and explore data in Excel using Python plots and libraries, and then use Excel's formulas, charts and PivotTables to further refine your insights. Really cool! NOTE: To use Python in Excel, join the Microsoft 365 Insider Program and choose the Beta Channel Insider level to get the latest builds of the Excel application.???

Community

• Microsoft Fabric - Local OneLake Tools by Ed Freeman - a video presenting how to use OneLake File Explorer and Azure Storage Explorer to access OneLake in Fabric.
• An article and a video Differences between GROUPBY and SUMMARIZE by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo (both Microsoft MVPs). Learn when GROUPBY will be a better choice than SUMMARIZE in your DAX measures.
• Two blog posts - Log out of Power BI automatically after a period of inactivity and The "External table is not in the expected format" error in Power Query in Power BI and Excel - by Chris Webb (Microsoft).
• A blog post Data Modeling for Mere Mortals – Part 4: Medallion Architecture Essentials by Nikola Ilic (Microsoft MVP). The 4th part of Nikola's series on data modeling, this time dedicated to the infamous medallion architecture useful for lakehouse implementations.
• An article PowerBI/Fabric REST API unleashed! by Mateusz Sawicki . Really well-structured one with examples of use cases.
• A nice tool for calculating the licensing price of Power BI deployment: Power BI Licensing Calculator by Stephanie Bruno .
• The 4th part of the blog/video series on taming Google Scholar data using Microsoft Fabric Data Pipelines - API Pagination with Fabric Data Pipelines . by Joshua Thomas.
• An article Deploying Microsoft Fabric Capacity Using Terraform by Aitor Murguzur (Microsoft).
• Four blog posts - Prepare Azure DevOps for Microsoft Fabric Git integration , Using Azure DevOps Analytics views and Microsoft Fabric to create Sprint review reports , Initial Microsoft Fabric Git integration tests for Power BI Reports and Working with Microsoft Fabric Git integration and multiple workspaces by Kevin Chant (Microsoft MVP). Great source of information about how to implement CI/CD and DevOps processes for Fabric.
• Two blog posts - Solve the Right Problems and How to set table or matrix column widths in a Power BI report by Kurt Buhler (Microsoft MVP). I enjoyed especially the first, non-technical one, on how over-focusing on technical solutions to technical problems can blind us and prevent from running successful analytical projects.
• Four blog posts - Boosting Copy Activity Throughput in Fabric , Lakehouse Folder Size Calculation , Recursively Loading Files From Multiple Workspaces And Lakehouses in Fabric and Creating Shortcut To KQL Table In Fabric Lakehouse - by Sandeep Pawar . I'm constantly amazed by the originality and technical value of Sandeep's posts! His blog is worth following.
• Two blog posts - Unveiling Tenant Configuration in Fabric: Empowering User Exploration and Access OneLake files from Power BI Desktop - by Marc Lelijveld (Microsoft MVP).
• A blog post Personal Workspaces in Times of Fabric ( datameerkat.com ) about infamous and demonized personal workspaces by ?těpán Re?l (Microsoft MVP).
• Four blog posts - First Look at Fabric F2 , Loading files from a folder to Fabric DWH using data Factory pipeline , First Look at Dataflow Gen2 and Sharing Data Between OneLake and Snowflake by Mimoune Djouallah . I enjoy the way Mimoune tests Fabric and reports on these tests in his blog posts! Plus, he often points out missing opportunities in the products ;-)
• Two videos - Advancing Fabric - Orchestration with Data Factory and Advancing Fabric - Real Time Analytics - by Simon Whiteley and Craig Porteous (both Microsoft MVPs).
• A video Monitoring Power BI and Fabric Tenant Information by Reid Havens ????♂? and Just Blindb?k (both Microsoft MVPs). If you haven't seen Just's solution for Power BI/Fabric monitoring, check it out on GitHub: justBlindbaek/PowerBIMonitor .
• Two videos - Intro to Notebooks and Notebooks Loading Tables From Lakehouse - by Michael Carlo and Tommy Puglia (both Microsoft MVPs). Check out the whole Learn Fabric playlist by Mike and Tommy.
• A series of Fabric Fridays live streams - Microsoft Fabric Roles #11 , Learn how to work with Microsoft Fabric #12 and Microsoft Fabric Data Factory #13 by Christopher Wagner, MBA, MVP and Kevin Arnold (both Microsoft MVPs).
• Two videos - Microsoft Fabric OneLake Explorer or also an Azure Data Lake Explorer| Shortcut and Data Wrangling Using Notebook and Pandas Dataframe vs Dataflow Gen 2- Power Query - by Amit Chandak (Microsoft MVP). Do not miss Amit's Microsoft Fabric playlist with 30+ videos on Fabric in it!
• Two videos - Enabling Microsoft Fabric Step by Step: Unlocking the Magic and Exploring Microsoft Fabric: Dive into Capacities, SKUs, and Pricing Models - by Gaston Cruz and Alex Rostan (both Microsoft MVPs).
• Two blog posts and related videos - Fabric Data Factory: Copy Activity is More Than Copy and Data Wrangler VS. Power Query Editor - Microsoft Fabric by Reza Rad (Microsoft MVP). Keep an eye on Reza's blog for more Fabric related blog posts and videos.
• Two videos - Want to Upgrade Your Power BI Matrix into an Advanced IBCS Style Data Visualization? Here's How! and Revolution in Power BI data visualization. Highly customized charts based on native matrix visuals. - by Andrzej Leszkiewicz . Andrzej showed in these videos how you can use DAX measures to build a code producing SVG IBCS-like visualizations. Cool stuff!
• A heads up for fans of Deneb custom visual in Power BI - watch out for version 1.6.0 (in Alpha testing now). Daniel Marsh-Patrick recently posted a video showing a significant performance improvement coming to Deneb visuals!

My little contribution to the community last month was the OneLake - the foundation of Microsoft Fabric, OneDrive for data and the data silo killer session delivered for Microsoft Fabric and Synapse Data Engineering Explorers -User Group Norway.

You can find all the official announcements and updates on the?Azure Updates website ,?Microsoft Fabric blog ?and the?Power BI blog .

That's all folks! Let me know if I missed anything important or interesting. Share what your favorite new features/improvements to Fabric and Power BI are. Thanks for reading and until next time.