dataMinds News Round up –
November 2023
Over the last couple of months Paul Andrew been involved in the design and build of a real-time analytics platform where Microsoft Fabric has been front and center for the delivery. After a lot of debate during the design phase, it was concluded that using Microsoft Azure to handle the data ingestion from an evolving source API was needed, with Microsoft Fabric supporting all technical capabilities downstream was the best approach.
Despite playing with different parts of the Fabric ecosystem for a long time, nothing ever prepares you for the challenges and “quirks” faced when building a solution for real. This post calls out some of the pain points of creating production solutions with preview tools.
Microsoft Fabric is an awesome product that has now been in public preview for five months. If you are not familiar with it, check out James Serra‘s recent video where he provides a Microsoft Fabric introduction. Also, an excellent training course has just been released to learn all about Fabric: Microsoft Fabric Complete Guide – Future of Data with Fabric.
Just released was the Microsoft Fabric roadmap that you can check out at https://aka.ms/FabricRoadmap. It’s great to see Microsoft be transparent on what features they are working on and when they will be available.
Here are James’ top 18 features on the Fabric roadmap that he’s most excited about!
In the Power BI/Fabric community everyone is excited about the recent release of Semantic Link: the ability to analyse Power BI data easily using Python in Fabric notebooks. Sandeep Pawar has an excellent blog post here explaining what this is and why it’s so cool. Meanwhile in the Excel community, everyone is excited about the new integration of Python into Excel. But can you analyse Power BI data in Excel using Python? Yes you can – Chris Webb walks the talk.
Microsoft Fabric offers a workload for real-time solutions. Real-time Analytics can be used for streaming data, such as the data coming from IoT devices. It can be used not only to ingest the data but also to analyze it and use it for other Fabric workloads, such as data science. In this article and video, Reza Rad will instruct what is Real-Time Analytics in Microsoft Fabric and how it works.
Hold on tight as Patrick unveils the game-changing update on Power BI Desktop that will blow your mind. Thanks to the hard work of Zoe and the Power BI team, you can now enjoy a whole new set of features and capabilities that will transform your modeling experience.
Microsoft Ignite 2023, scheduled for November 14th – 17th, is quickly approaching. As one of the most anticipated developer events of the year, Microsoft’s pleased to announce that although in-person tickets have been sold out for weeks, they’re offering a free online streaming option for those who couldn’t secure a spot. However, it’s essential to register in advance to ensure access.
This year’s Ignite will feature the latest announcements on AI/Copilot advancements, comprehensive demos of new features and functionalities, and insights into the trajectory of tech developments. Notably, in addition to presentations by senior leaders, attendees can look forward to breakout sessions featuring Visual Studio led by Amanda Silver (CVP Developer Division), Scott Hanselman, and Anthony Cangialosi. These sessions are set to deliver crucial announcements, in-depth demos, and valuable insights tailored for our Visual Studio developers.
