I talked about Microsoft Fabric shortcuts in my blog post Microsoft Fabric – the great unifier (where I have updated the picture with the newest supported sources) and wanted to provide more details on how shortcuts work and reduce some confusion. This is how shortcuts appear in Explorer: Here are important key points in understanding shortcuts: You can create shortcuts in Fabric lakehouses and Kusto Query Language (KQL) databases, not in Fabric warehouses You can use the Fabric UI to create shortcuts interactively, and you can use the REST API to create shortcuts programmatically ..read more

(Shameless plug: The price of my book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh” has dropped on Amazon to its lowest price yet) A ton of new features for Microsoft Fabric were announced at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. Here are all the new features I am aware of, with some released now and others coming soon: Mirroring is now in public preview for Cosmos DB, Azure SQL DB and Snowflake. See Announcing the Public Preview of Database Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric You get a free terabyte of Mirroring storage ..read more

I focus most of my blog posts on the data platform and how companies can make better business decisions using structured data (think SQL tables), but I’m seeing more and more customers interested in OpenAI and how they can make better business decisions with OpenAI using unstructured data (think text in documents). And they want to know if it is possible to use OpenAI on structured data? This is my first blog in a three-part series on the topic. This first blog will focus on using OpenAI on unstructured data, where the ideal solution is a bot, like ChatGPT, that is used to ask questions on doc ..read more

I’ve collaborated with two industry experts to design a transformative course for data leaders: “The Technical and Strategic Data Leader.” This six-week intensive learning journey is crafted to elevate both your technical skills and strategic acumen. Facing Data Leadership Challenges? Struggling with the balance between business objectives and technical challenges? Feeling isolated in your leadership role, wishing for a community that understands? Comfortable in technical or business discussions but feel out of depth when crossing over? What Sets This Course Apart? Beyond Basics: Dive into ..read more

I’m thrilled to share that after 15 months of dedicated effort, my book, “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh,” is now available in eBook/Kindle format on Amazon! The journey to this moment has been incredibly rewarding, and I’m excited for you to see the result. The paperback edition will be available in about 2-3 weeks. You can order the eBook on Amazon here (for USA). And I would greatly appreciate any Amazon reviews! The book is being rolled out to other online stores, and some may have it at a lower price tha ..read more

As a follow up to my blog Common Data Mesh exceptions, I wanted to discuss various types of data mesh topologies I am seeing being built. I put them into three categories, but there are many variations to these three (variations mentioned in my exceptions blog). Ole Olesen-Bagneux has just posted a similar discussion on LinkedIn about data mesh types that I encourage you to check out. On the left of the figure below, the architectures have the most centralization, and the architectures become more distributed as you move to the right: Mesh Type 1 In this setup, all domains use identical techn ..read more

When it comes to data meshes that have been constructed or are currently under development, I have not observed any instances where the four core data mesh principles have been utilized to their fullest extent. This ideal, which I term the ‘pure’ data mesh, demands strict adherence to its defined principles. However, in practice, all implementations deviate from this pure form, each with its own set of exceptions. Among these, some of the most frequent exceptions I have seen are: Data is kept in one enterprise data lake with each domain getting its own container/folder instead of each domain ..read more

I’m seeing a lot of excitement from customers over Microsoft Fabric, now that it GA’d a few weeks ago. One thing that is generating a lot of that excitement is using Fabric in a way that I call “the great unifier”. That is, using Fabric shortcuts and mirroring so that anyone can very easily use Power BI to easily create reports and dashboards using data from multiple sources without copying the data into OneLake. Shortcuts and mirroring make it appear to the report user that all the data they need is local due to the ease of use of object Explorer: These tables all seem to be local, but in fa ..read more

After more than two years in development and six months in public preview, Microsoft Fabric is now generally available (GA). Here is the announcement made during Microsoft Ignite last week. If you are not familiar with Fabric, check out my blog Build announcement: Microsoft Fabric | James Serra’s Blog. Make sure to check out the Microsoft Fabric roadmap at https://aka.ms/FabricRoadmap to be aware of those features that are not yet available in GA. “General Availability” signifies that a product or service is fully developed, tested, and ready for production use. Once a product reaches GA, it h ..read more

For those looking to be first in line when my book is available for a printed copy, I’m very excited to let you know that it is now available for pre-order on Amazon at Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh: 9781098150761: Serra, James. Note that I’m expecting the book to be available a couple months before the listed April 2nd date. And for those at the PASS Summit this week, I’ll be doing two sessions: Enhancing your Career: Building your Personal Brand Thursday, Nov 16, 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM PST, room 609 In three ye ..read more