Press "Enter" to skip to content

Author: Kevin Feasel

Access S3 Buckets in VPCs in Fabric via Entra Integration

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Premal Shah announces new functionality in preview:

When we first introduced Amazon S3 shortcut integration with Microsoft Entra ID, customers gained a powerful new way to connect S3 data to Microsoft Fabric — without storing or rotating AWS access keys. Using OpenID Connect (OIDC), Fabric authenticates directly with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), enabling secure, identity-based access to cloud storage.

However, many enterprises keep their S3 buckets locked down inside Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) or behind corporate firewalls. In these environments, Entra OIDC can authenticate identities, but it cannot provide network access — so Fabric still cannot reach the S3 endpoint. That changes today.

Read on to see what has changed, how you can enable this functionality, and current limitations.

Leave a Comment

Choosing RANK() over RANKX() in DAX

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari make a decision:

In this article, we are not going to discuss the syntax of the RANK and RANKX functions. If you need more information, we suggest you consult DAX Guide for syntax, as well as the following articles, which introduce both functions: Introducing the RANK window function in DAX and Introducing RANKX in DAX.

RANKX is the classic method of ranking in DAX; RANK is a newer window function that works faster, better, and in a more flexible way. RANK is used in both visual calculations and measures. Which function should you use in which scenario? The answer depends on your requirements: each solution has pros and cons.

Read on for the comparison criteria and when you should choose each.

Leave a Comment

Backups on Secondary Replicas in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Brendan McCaffrey takes a look:

Back in 2022, I wrote a post called SQL Server Backups on Secondary Replicas: Best Practice or Bad Idea? At the time, the limitations were clear: backups on secondaries were restricted, operationally risky, and often misunderstood.

Three years later, SQL Server 2025 has expanded what you can do on a secondary replica. Some of these changes are genuinely great. But the question I keep getting is:

Does SQL Server 2025 finally make backups on secondary replicas a best practice?

Read on for the answer.

Leave a Comment

Dealing with Index Bloat in Postgres

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little trims down the database after Thanksgiving:

Index bloat in Postgres can cause problems, but it’s easy to miss.

I’ve written about how vacuum problems can prevent PostgreSQL from using covering indexes, and index bloat is one of the things that can make vacuum struggle.

Here’s what you need to know about index bloat, how to find it, and how to fix it.

Read on to learn what Kendra means by index bloat, ways in which it can occur, why this is an issue, and how to identify and correct it.

Leave a Comment

Exploring the Fabric Capacity Metrics App

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven wants to get the number:

If you find yourself checking the Metrics app and see a spike in usage you might want to analyze that. How many times did you have to click to get exactly the column you needed? Or before you were able to click any column at all?

Read on to see how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. As well as how to deal with a visual not based in log units.

Leave a Comment

Comparing Postgres Write-Ahead Logging to Oracle Redo Metrics

Published 2025-12-03 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Gorman makes a comparison:

For anyone who has spent years tuning Oracle redo, the first time you look at PostgreSQL’s pg_stat_wal view may feel a bit underwhelming. Everything works, but the instrumentation isn’t the same and you suddenly realize how much Oracle has spoiled you with it’s advanced and expensive features.

As I’ve been working deeper with PostgreSQL, I keep getting questions about how its WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) data compares to Oracle’s redo performance metrics. Let’s break it down in a way that makes sense for people who’ve been living in the Oracle world for years.

Click through to see what each competitor gets you.

Leave a Comment

Getting ML Services Running on SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Greg Low takes a look at ML Services:

This is an update of a post that I wrote for SQL Server 2022 . Unfortunately, those instructions needed to be updated, not because anything notable has changed in SQL Server 2025, but because the recent distribution of Python has changed. Thanks to Peter Bishop for reporting what was now missing.

I hope that the versions Greg mentions—R 4.2 and Python 3.10—aren’t the latest that SQL Server supports, because those are both woefully out of date. Python 3.10 came out almost 4 years ago and R 4.2 is almost 3 years old at this point.

Leave a Comment

Gresham’s Law and AI-Generated Texts

Published 2025-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

John Mount describes a problem:

I would like to write a bit about text. That is: technical writing, legal briefs, or even an opinion piece such as this note. Such writings make up much of our society and form a “marketplace of ideas.”

Texts are now very cheap to produce using large language models (LLMs). Some simulated texts remain correct and useful, and some contain numerous subtle flaws and fabrications. In my opinion it remains expensive to reliably determine which text is which type, as LLMs are not as good at detection as fabrication.

Read on for some of the challenges that have come with the proliferation of language models and text auto-generation. John mentions scientific conferences being overwhelmed with AI-generated abstracts, peer reviews, and the like. In the technical world, we’re also seeing an inundation of AI-generated abstracts. For example, we’ve developed a few key tells for submissions to speak at our user group and will automatically reject abstracts that hit those tells. I’m sure there’s a false positive rate there, but that kind of protection mechanism is important to avoid no-shows from artificially generated abstracts.

Leave a Comment

Upgrading to SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

John Deardurff checks out a tool built into SSMS 22:

Starting with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22, the Hybrid & Migration Component delivers a streamlined experience for upgrade assessment and side-by-side migration. This replaces the Data Migration Assistant (DMA) that retired on July 16, 2025, consolidating assessment and migration into one tool. So what are the key capabilities:

Click through for those capabilities and a few tips on how to use it. I’m not sure how clean the upgrade process is to 2025 versus standalone installation. I’d imagine that, if you’re not using something like ML Services, it’s probably fine.

Leave a Comment

Using the Microsoft Fabric Copy Job with Data in Dataverse

Published 2025-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Laura Graham-Brown loads some data:

Dataverse is the data store behind parts of Dynamics and lots of Power Platform projects. So Dataverse can contain vital business data that will be needed for reporting. In this post we are going to look at one method which is using copy job with Dataverse to copy across data in Microsoft Fabric.

Click through to see how, including incremental data loads.

Leave a Comment