A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Sunitha Muthukrishna has an update:
Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code enables users to manage Fabric items efficiently from within VS Code. We are announcing two new features for Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code that allow you to manage Fabric items directly within your workspace. These enhancements are based on customer feedback, and we welcome further input to improve this product.
Click through to see what’s new in the product.
Comments closedPatrick LeBlanc has a big list for us:
The June 2025 Fabric update introduces several key enhancements across multiple areas. Power BI celebrates its 10th anniversary with a range of community events, contests, expert-led sessions, and special certification exam discounts. In Data Engineering, Fabric Notebooks now support integration with variable libraries in preview, empowering users to manage configuration values centrally for improved modularity and scalability.
Additional updates span Data Science, Data Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence, and Data Factory, with new features such as upgraded AI functions, enhanced real-time data capabilities, and improvements to data ingestion and security. These updates collectively aim to streamline workflows, boost performance, and foster greater collaboration across teams.
Click through for the full update.
Comments closedJon Vöge comes continues looking at Power BI writeback:
This blog has previously covered the basics of native Microsoft Fabric / Power BI write-back with Translytical Task Flows.
In my first post on the subject, we created a simple Comment/Annotation solution, allowing the user to input free text comments on Data Points directly in Power BI.
However, Translytical Task Flows do not only support Free Text as an input type for the users of your reports. All of the new & updated Power BI Slicer visuals work with Translytical Task Flows, and we can use List and Button slicers for users to add categorical data to our task flows too.
Read on to see these other options in action.
Comments closedAaron Merrill shares some news:
It’s been almost 3 months since we announced OneLake security at FabCon 2025 in Las Vegas, and while the interest has not slowed down, we’ve also been working behind the scenes to improve the feature and address your feedback. In this blog post, we’ll go through some of the latest updates on OneLake security including further support for OneLake shortcuts, improved RLS authoring, and updated permissions to manage OneLake security.
Read on to see what has changed.
Comments closedSrdjan Martin has an announcement:
SQL native Scalar user-defined functions (UDFs) in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse and SQL analytics endpoint are now in preview.
A scalar UDF is a custom code implemented in T-SQL that accepts parameters, performs an action such as complex calculation, and returns a result of that action as a single value.
I wonder if the same advice for SQL Server will apply to these: don’t use them because they are performance sinks. Knowing that these are scalar functions, I’d be inclined to do some considerable performance testing before rolling them out.
Comments closedPaul Turley expands beyond the Microsoft ecosystem:
Tableau led the self-service visual reporting revolution and now part of the Salesforce suite, it is bound to continue to have a loyal following and user base. The purpose of this article is not to compare Tableau to Power BI nor to expound on the strengths or perceived weaknesses of either product, but to share my experience and learnings about using Tableau with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI semantic models. I will demonstrate how to use Tableau with a Direct Lake semantic model, a large import mode semantic model and how effectively Tableau works securely with semantic model-based row-level security (RLS).
Read on for Paul’s findings. I do appreciate Paul’s ecumenical approach here. It’s fun to pick your favorite sports team (yay, Team SQL Server!) and razz fans of other teams (boo, Team Oracle!). And given how often I do just that, I can’t begrudge anyone the pleasure. But it’s also good to remember that tools deserve no loyalty except inasmuch as they provide value to you.
Comments closedKristina Mishra takes us through troubleshooting a problem:
Ah, you’ve setup a deployment pipeline and let your people know it’s ready for them to do the thing. Everything looks fine on your end, so you shoot off a message to the group and go about your busy day. (Nevermind your Test environment was set up 4 months ago, Production 3 days ago, and Development was replaced 2 months ago with a new Development environment because your region changed.) You’ve added all the permission groups to each environment and added your “contributors” as Admin to the deployment pipeline (no comment), so everything should be grand.
Famous last words, indeed.
Comments closedKamil Nowinski has a module for us:
In the world of Microsoft Fabric, DevOps is still maturing. Unlike Azure Data Factory (ADF), which has been around long enough to have established tooling – like the #ADFTools I developed 5 years ago – Fabric is new, broad, and complex, in a very positive way!
Microsoft Fabric integrates data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and BI. With this scale, the need for solid DevOps tooling is more critical than ever.
Click through to read a little bit of the history behind the project, as well as what’s currently available. And it’s all free and open-source.
Comments closedHave you ever found yourself frustrated by inconsistent item creation? Maybe you’ve struggled to select the right workspace or folder when creating a new item or ended up with a cluttered workspace due to accidental item creation.
We hear you—and we’re excited to introduce the new item creation experience in Fabric! This update is designed to address those pain points head-on. With the new unified creation flow, you’ll have a streamlined way to select the exact workspace and folder where your items belong. More importantly, this improvement brings consistency and cohesion to item creation across all Fabric items, so you can stay organized and productive.
Click through to see what it looks like.
Comments closedLukasz Pawlowski makes an announcement:
We’re excited to announce Surge Protection for background operations is now Generally Available (GA). Using surge protection, capacity admins can limit overuse by background operations in their capacities.
Read on to learn more about what surge protection is and some of the consequences of turning this on if you do hit your limits.
Comments closed