Writing
Notes on software engineering, data platforms, AI, and the craft of building things.
A Delta table is a folder of files plus a transaction log. Nine ideas explain why it slows down and how OPTIMIZE, VACUUM, clustering, and deletion vectors keep it fast. Build, wreck, diagnose, and repair a simulated table on this page.
A living catalog of 89 Microsoft Fabric capabilities across 11 catalog tabs: what each is, when to use it, when to skip it, and its GA or preview month.
Microsoft ships ten official Model Context Protocol servers for Fabric, six remote and four local, and picking the wrong one is the most common way an AI agent stalls out. A decision tree for choosing the right one, plus your first working connection.
Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg now match on core capabilities, so the choice comes down to three questions: which engine writes the table, which catalog governs it, and who must read it without a copy. A decision guide with the Microsoft Fabric interop paths.
An ontology is a written map of the things your business runs on and how they connect. Why you need one the day your answers depend on connections across systems, what the building blocks are, which tools build it, and how to build one in-house.
Copilot and Fabric Data Agents answer from your semantic model's metadata, so preparing the model is the real AI work. A persona-mapped, flowchart-driven guide with brownfield and greenfield checklists.
A Power BI semantic model in Microsoft Fabric can be tuned for self-service exploration, certified analytics, or AI agents, but not all three at once. Six dimensions pull the model in different directions, and the one-source-three-models pattern resolves the conflict.
AI knowledge retrieval works best as a router: match each question type (lookup, meaning, connect-the-dots, whole-collection) to the right search method (keyword, hybrid, reranking, multi-step, graph) instead of defaulting to vector search for everything.
Beginner-friendly guide to choosing hash functions across Microsoft Fabric. Why Spark hash() breaks at scale, how to make SHA-256 match across Spark, Warehouse, and KQL, and a top-5 comparison on F64 SKU.
V-Order, Liquid Clustering, OPTIMIZE, and VACUUM each solve a different problem in Microsoft Fabric. A decision framework for picking the right lever, not a checklist.
A structured rubric for assessing Microsoft Fabric operational maturity. Six domains, five levels, and an interactive dashboard to score your deployment and surface prioritized gaps.
Complete coverage of 30+ announcements from the combined FabCon + SQLCon event: Fabric IQ, OneLake Security, Runtime 2.0, Database Hub, and more.
