ALS diagnosis and my MVP award

I received my official ALS diagnosis in September 2022, but by the previous fall, it was pretty clear that I had ALS. I didn’t know how much longer I could work. ALS progresses differently for everyone. My symptoms started in my hands and arms. 3Cloud supported me through it all. I decided it was time to retire due to fatigue and speech difficulties.

In early 2024, Kristyna Ferris and Chris Wagner nominated me for an MVP award with support from Paul Turley. I submitted my community contributions which were heavily focused on Microsoft Fabric. I was awarded the Data Platform Microsoft MVP in June 2024.

The award was bittersweet. My ALS had progressed far enough that my ability to travel was greatly hampered. This meant I couldn’t go to events like the MVP Summit in person. While I attended online and learned much, I wasn’t able to build those relationships that in person attendance fosters. I also missed the unique opportunity to attend with my daughter, a fellow MVP.

I continued to present and create Fabric 5 videos until my extended hospital stay in early 2025. It took about six months to recover. ALS sucks!

My decision is right, not easy

In early 2026, I had to evaluate my contributions or lack thereof. I fell behind on all things Fabric during 2025. Not only was I no longer contributing to the community, but I wasn’t attending product team meetings or MVP Summit. I had effectively checked out.

I knew there was a chance that I could still be renewed, I chose not to try. I didn’t want to take a spot from someone who has earned it. You see, this was not the first time I had been nominated. I was nominated in 2012 and 2013 for my work with SQL Server and Analysis Services. Microsoft rejected my nominations because the program was full.

Even though it is one more thing I am giving up in my data career, I am not seeking a renewal of my MVP award. I really wish I could have contributed to the program longer. ALS has taken this from me, and it makes me sad.

Thank you

I want to express my sincere thanks again to Chris, Kristyna, and Paul for nominating me for the award. Thanks to Rie Merritt and the Microsoft team for finding me worthy and making it possible to join this great group of people. Thank you to the many product teams for taking time to share what they are working on and allowing us the opportunity to engage with them. Even though my time was short in the program, I greatly appreciated the opportunity!

What’s next for me

Well, to start with, I don’t plan to quit the data community. I started a new blog series here called Ramblings of a retired data architect. When you’re retired you can really speak your mind. What am I going to do? Fire myself? Ha! I plan to enjoy it. I also will participate in T-SQL Tuesday and review books. I haven’t forgotten everything.

There is also this little website I created. It’s like a small business. I keep busy maintaining it and adding new content. I have become a web designer which is a far cry from a data architect.

I also volunteer in the ALS community, including becoming a Bridging Voice Ambassador. As you can see, I keep busy.

Thanks to everyone who joined the blog party this month. I noticed three themes in the responses. Every response had one or more of these themes woven into their response.

1. I learned something.
2. I discovered ways to improve my presentations.
3. I get more value in the hallway conversations.

No matter how you learn, you can find value at conferences. Our industry is made up of people with different learning styles. I learn best in a classroom. Others prefer hands on experience. Before we recap the responses, let’s have a look at the invitation.

The Invitation

We are in the heart of the spring conference season. Maybe you had the opportunity to attend FabCon / SQLCon or a weekend event like Data Saturday. This month I’m inviting you to tell us about one or more things you learned at ANY conference you have attended that has impacted you or how you work.

Rob Farley – Presentations with impact! | LobsterPot Solutions

Rob discusses the impact of a TechEd speaker who engaged the audience including himself. He used this experience to develop into a better speaker. He also emphasizes the importance of community interaction and hallway conversations at events.

I wanted to be able to grab the attention of the people in the room (or at least most of them), and hold onto it. To teach their hearts and not just their minds, hopefully so they would leave changed. I try to do the same with my consulting, with the people I encounter in life in general. 

Vlad Drumea – T-SQL Tuesday #197 – An impactful session changed my DBA career – VladDBA

Vlad recalls a session from ITCamp in Romania on security. Even though he had been a DBA for many years, this session motivated his ongoing work in cybersecurity.

Not only did I find her session very insightful and entertaining, but it kick-started my active interest in cybersecurity which turned out to go very well with my passion for SQL Server.

Jamal Hansen – T-SQL Tuesday 197: How I Have Been Impacted by Conferences | Jamal Hansen

Jamal focuses on the general value of attending conferences. He differentiates between vendor conferences and community conferences. Community conferences focus on people more than product.

The community conferences are different. People are the focus. Ideas and friendship are the reasons they come together. Those are the ones with talks that stick. Those are the ones I keep going back to.

Kevin Chant – T-SQL Tuesday 196 – An impactful session – Chantified Lens

Kevin shares how a session at SQLBits encouraged him to expand well beyond SQL Server on premises. He would delve into Azure and DevOps. That session positively impacted how he conducts his own presentations today.

Suffice to say that this session led me down the path to many things. Including working on a special project for my employer at the time and an improved awareness of the possibilities of CI/CD. I ended up absorbing so much knowledge about Azure that I ended up gaining the MCSD Azure Architect certification.

Steve Jones – Impactful Sessions I’ve Seen: T-SQL Tuesday #196 | Voice of the DBA

Steve starts out explaining how at this point in his career he finds more value in the conversations than in the sessions. However, that was not always true. He lists six sessions from the many he has attended through the years that impacted him.

There’s always a lot to learn, and going to sessions is a great way to get inspired and help you build your own solutions.

Mike Donnelly – Examples of Memory Leaks (T-SQL Tuesday #197) – A Coding Journey

Mike talks about a session on SQL Server administration he attended at his first SQL Saturday in Minnesota. He learned the importance of managing SQL Server at the server level. At the same event he heard about the local SQL Server user group, eventually becoming its board chair.

At that same SQL Saturday, I learned about the monthly PASSMN meetings and started attending them regularly, which led to me eventually presenting some sessions of my own, and ultimately becoming the PASSMN board chair (after Steve stepped down). It is not an exaggeration to say that SQL Saturday #58 changed the course of my career.

Louis Davidson – T-SQL Tuesday #197 – An impactful session or two from a conference – Drsql’s Database Musings

Louis calls out two sessions on database design that impacted his database design. At CA World he learned about the impact of semantics, and at the SQL Server 7.0 launch, he got insight into SQL Server internals.

Why I still go to sessions – Because I learn things that I don’t know. Sometimes it is deep, interesting things that change me. Sometimes it is things that don’t mean anything big, but stick with me. Sometimes it is something that helps me professionally.

Courtney Woolum – T-SQL Tuesday #197: The Value of Conference Season – Data Court

Courtney highlights two sessions from Derby City Data Days. The first was on SQL Server indexing optimization. As a lone DBA, she got validation for much of the work she was doing. The second session covered the PIVOT function in SQL Server and was instrumental in solving an issue she was dealing with. She also calls out friends she made at the event.

A final shout out to everyone who has been a part of the organization, planning, and execution of an event in this great community. Your time is much appreciated and does not go unnoticed. Please keep up the great work you do, and remember: Cleveland Data Rocks.

That’s a wrap!

Thank you to everyone who partied with us this month. I hope you are encouraged to attend, organize, or present at an event.

Are interested in hosting? Contact Steve Jones for details.

The Invitation

We are in the heart of the spring conference season. Maybe you had the opportunity to attend FabCon / SQLCon or a weekend event like Data Saturday. This month I’m inviting you to tell us about one or more things you learned at ANY conference you have attended that has impacted you or how you work.

My experience

I am not sure which PASS Summit it was, either 2007 or 2008. I attended a session conducted by a Microsoft engineer from the SQL Server team. He presented on the physical storage patterns of SQL Server to disk. The session delved into how SQL Server wrote data to disk and the related impact to read and write performance.

This session changed how I designed tables and indexes. It also ingrained in me the importance of understanding the physical infrastructure supporting my data work. Later I would learn how to optimize storage for SQL Server Analysis Services much to the chagrin of SAN administrators. They really didn’t like me asking to only write data to the outer 10-20% of the disks.

While the technology has changed, the principles have not. My focus shifted to networking and cloud design. As an architect, I didn’t need to know all the details. But I had the knowledge and understanding required to have meaningful conversations and detailed design sessions with specialists. That one session changed how I designed solutions throughout my career!

Some final guidance

When you have completed your post and published it on Tuesday, April 14th, drop a comment below. Also include the logo and a link back to this post. I will create a summary post within a week, but I need to know you wrote it. I look forward to your contribution.

Are interested in hosting? Contact Steve Jones for details.

The T-SQL Tuesday topic this month comes James Serra. What career risks have you taken?

I started my career as a preacher and ended it as a director in data consulting with a Microsoft MVP award. I can think of two major career risks or decisions I made that shaped my career trajectory.

Going into consulting

The first big risk I took was going into consulting. I had just learned how to create a database and write an application using Microsoft Access. I developed a warehouse management solution to replace manual, handwritten product location management. The tables were normalized, the front end was extended with Visual Basic, and we used barcodes and handheld scanners.

We didn’t work for corporate IT at the time. My partner, Steve Heyer, and I worked in the shipping department. The IT manager wanted us to move to IT, but I didn’t want to leave my manager. So, I reached out to a couple of recruiters about a job. At the same time, a recruiter from Magenic contacted me.

After an interesting interview, I was hired as a VB developer. It was here I moved into SQL Server and SSAS development. Little did I know that this decision would launch my career in data the way it did. This leap was huge for me because I really knew nothing about the career I had chosen for myself. At the height of the dotcom bubble no less.

Stepping out of consulting

At this point, I had worked at Magenic over five years. We just had our fourth child. I was on the road traveling to a client every other week and was missing a lot of time at home. I changed clients and ended up working four miles from my house. I loved it.

As I looked at the next step for my career, I knew it would require more time on the road. I approached my client about working for them. It was a huge risk for them and me. This was a contract breach for both of us. Furthermore, I assumed my career would stagnate because I was moving out of consulting.

Magenic was gracious and understanding. They worked out an agreement with my client for additional services and I made the move. Four and a half years later, I would return to Magenic.

What was the impact of this risky move? By working close to home, I established good family habits and got involved in the life of my kids which helped create healthy boundaries at work. This blog and the Data on Wheels brand was created. My consulting skills improved because I had to live with and maintain what I had built. My skills did not stagnate. I helped bring one of the first SaaS solutions to the market and pushed SSAS to its limit in the process.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely!

Without taking these risks, I wouldn’t have ended my career the way I did. I also wouldn’t have set professional boundaries to safeguard family time. I am happy I took these risks.

While I lay here today with ALS, I am thankful for my family and friends. I am thankful for the good disability insurance. I hope you can look at your next career decision with a holistic view.

Guess who’s next…

Stay tuned here. I am honored and excited to host the next T-SQL Tuesday. Look for the invitation next month!

Contents

• The value of data communities
• Why you should be a contributor
• Write about it
• Talk about it
• Are you ready to ramble?

The value of data communities

I want to kick off this section with my experience with community. Then delve into the value of being involved in the data community.

A little history

When I started my consulting career in SQL Server nearly 25 years ago, I was a newbie. I came from a background in Microsoft Access. At some point, I got connected with some other SQL Server professionals in Minnesota. We decided to create a user group – Minnesota SQL Server User Group. Eventually, we joined PASS.

This was my first experience in the data community. I made many friends in this community. We supported each other’s skills and career growth. We helped each other with technical issues and shared technical wins.

The value of community is community

You should definitely participate in communities. The best option is to take the time, usually once a month, to engage in community. Meeting in person is preferred because you can focus on the people and the topic. Talk to each other. If you join a virtual group, participate! Don’t do something else during the meeting. Engage in the comments, Q&A, and any banter. While virtual group meetings are more convenient, the onus is on you to interact. If there is no option to interact with each other, it is a webinar, not a user group. Find a user group.

The value of the data community is the community. Yes, we can and will learn from each other. Knowing and networking with peers leads to more growth and maturity as a person and a professional.

Why you should be a contributor

Simply put, if everyone is consumer, the community dies. The community is not intended to be a school with a couple of teachers and a bunch of students. In a true community, we are all contributors. Every user group has consumers and contributors. To be clear, not everyone who contributes leads the group or gives talks. Some ask questions, others stick around for discussions, and some extend a hand to welcome others. Consumers come, listen, and leave. Introversion is not a good excuse. Some of the best contributors I know are introverts.

Storytelling

We all have a story to tell from “it’s all new to me” to “I have been doing this for 20 years.”  Everyone can give back to group through questions, advice, inclusion, and insights. The key is proactively engaging and including. In this way, we build friendships, grow careers, and expand horizons. You miss out on all this if you only consume.

I am going to expand on two specific types of contributions in the remainder of this post – writing and talking. These are two ways to tangibly contribute to the community.

Write about it

When you write it down, you will remember it more. Writing for others forces clarity, accuracy, and defensibility. I call this “writing with CAD.” When we write to share with the community, we are compelled to write this way.

Clarity

Writing for others forces us to be clear about the topic. We need to organize our thoughts and write with purpose. We have to answer questions about what we are writing and does it make sense. I think this includes good editing. I highly recommend using tools that check grammar and spelling like Microsoft Editor in Office and Edge. Be careful using tools like Grammarly and Copilot. Use AI to clarify thoughts and not generate them.

Accuracy

Accuracy is especially important in technical writing. We should never assume our readers can fill in the blanks. If you’re writing a step-by-step blog, make sure you have all the steps. Be sure to include any context or assumptions. While we cannot guarantee that we didn’t miss anything, we should do our best to be precise so our readers can reproduce, practice, or implement what we are writing about.

Defensibility

Are you prepared to defend what you are writing about? I don’t mean this negatively. You should be able to explain why you did it that way or why you think you are correct. Sometimes this is part of the comment or post. Other times you just need to be prepared to answer questions. Defensibility is about being prepared.

To be clear, defensibility does not mean you are always right. Be prepared to hear new ideas and accept corrections. You can’t and won’t know everything. But it is important to know your “why.”

My motivation to write

When I started to blog, I made the mistake of writing for others. I made a decision early on to change the goal of my content. No longer would I try to write about what I think people would read. I decided to write for me. My technical writing became my personal knowledge base. If no one reads it, oh well. It was the best decision I made, and I recommend it for new bloggers all the time.

One great example from my writing is my series on Excel.  I was embedding Excel workbooks into SharePoint. The workbooks were backed by SQL Server Analysis Services cubes. The goal was to make elegant dashboards without looking like Excel. This tips and tricks series has many of my most read posts and some are still being viewed today. I wrote them as a reference for me, and others still find them helpful.

Next, I want to look at some ways you can contribute to the community through writing. It’s not just about blogging.

Where to write

If you’re interested in starting to write, here are some good options. If you’re already writing, maybe try something new.

Blogging

This is where I started in 2010. However, it’s not necessarily the easiest option. There are many decisions to be made to launch a blog.

• Where to host it? I use and like WordPress. We are still using the free version. I have seen blogs on Medium lately. Check out this article on the best options for free blogging platforms.
• What to call it? You can be creative here.
• Deciding on your first article.
• Where to promote it? LinkedIn, Facebook, X?

One reason I like blogging is that I own and control my content. I can point people to my blog, and it is clearly my work.

LinkedIn articles

LinkedIn articles can be a nice way to start writing. You can also promote a newsletter for people to subscribe to. It comes with a built-in promotional platform. You are on LinkedIn after all.

Data on Rails

Not sure where to start? We have a shared blog site where you can write a couple of posts to see if you like blog writing. We will promote your work as well.

If you like it and want to start your own blog, great! We encourage you to take your content to help kick it off. You are always welcome to keep writing here if you prefer to.

Commenting

The last area I want to cover is commenting. This is a great way to piggy back onto topics, content, or questions posted by others. You can share your thoughts, insights, and stories with others easily. Some of these can serve as prompts for your own content. Here are a few options for joining the conversation.

• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Microsoft forums

Talk about it

Most technologists are afraid of public speaking. Even now some of you are getting queasy just thinking about it. But talking about what you know and what you are learning is a great way to give back to the community. Speaking on a topic requires you to succinctly describe what you are talking about.

I have used speaking opportunities to share my experience with a product, pattern, and code. What I have found is that I have gaps to fill in about the topic. So, I learned more than I knew before I started.

I know getting started can be hard. Here is a pattern that may be helpful.

1. Choose
2. Prepare
3. Practice
4. Present
5. Improve

Let’s break these down.

Choose

When you start out, choose something you are familiar with and think is cool. You should be excited and comfortable with your topic. Also, try to be concise. A narrow topic is easier to prepare for.

Prepare

This is where most people get stuck. They start out with the wrong questions. What do I need? A presentation? A demo? Wrong questions? What you really need is the outline. An outline will help you stay focused. Start out by identifying three, no more, no less, points to make about your topic. I would recommend writing them down.

Once you have them ready, fill in the blanks.” What do you want to say about each point? Do you have sample code? A picture of a whiteboard? Lessons learned? Compile these into a document. Now you can expand your outline. It could look something like this :

• Topic: working with window functions in SQL Server
• What are window functions
  • What they do
  • Why I needed them
• How to build one
  • Sample code
  • Define key functions
    • Partition
    • Over
    • Order by
• Aggregation
  • Sample code of my use case

The presentation

Now you can build a presentation. You should start a slide deck with the following slides.

1. Title. Includes topic and your name.
2. Who you are. Name, role, something interesting about you.
3. Introduction. Topic, why the topic interests you.
4. First point.
5. Second point.
6. Third point.
7. Lessons learned. How did it help you? Or a quick summary about how to use it.
8. Thank you. Q & A, references.

You may need extra slides for some of your points, especially if you have sample code or diagrams. Don’t add to many extra slides. Remember that the slides support what you are talking about. If want to read something, use a printed document. DO NOT JUST READ YOUR SLIDES!

Practice

People practice in different ways. You should try a couple to find what works best for you. Whatever works for you is the right way for you to prepare. Here are some examples that you could use:

• Practice in front of a mirror
• Use PowerPoint’s timing feature
• Run through it with a friend
• Do a dry run with an experienced speaker
• Rehearse in your head

Present

You get to do your presentation. Exciting!

Improve

After your presentation be critical of your presentation, in a good way. We can always improve. If the event has reviews, use to make improvements. Don’t try change everything, focus on one or two things.

Demos are risky. If something goes wrong, have a backup ready. You don’t want to troubleshoot your demo live. I had slides with screenshots ready to go. Everyone has demos fail. I don’t recommend demos for your first presentation.

Where to speak

Next, we will look at some good opportunities to speak at.  

User groups

User groups are a great opportunity to speak to a friendly audience.

Lunch and learn

Lunch and learns are an informal way to get comfortable talking about your topic. Usually, you do these with your peers at work or with a client.

Small conferences

SQL Saturdays, Days of Data, and Data Saturdays are examples of small conferences. These are the next step after user groups.

Calls for presenters

You can find many opportunities to present when you are ready to stretch your wings here.

Career growth

While community involvement benefits the community, it also benefits your career. Not only can you build up your resume, but you can also build up your professional network.

Are you ready to ramble?

Well, if you made this far, I hope I have inspired you to get involved. Many people have started out small and grew their professional career using these activities. Everyone can contribute, even you. Let us know what you do in the comments. We would love to hear from you.

Ramblings of a retired data architect

Let me start by saying that I have been working with data for over thirty years. I think that just means I am old. I thought it would be fun to discuss my thoughts on various topics. This is my take and some of my thoughts are definitely “tongue in cheek.” So, enjoy the ride and feel free to share your take in the comments.

Let me start by saying that I have been working with data for over thirty years. I think that just means I am old. Anyway, I have written blog posts, delivered presentations, and authored books on these languages through the years. Understanding and using these languages have grown and shaped my career through the years. I thought it would be fun to discuss my thoughts on each one. This is my take and some of my thoughts are definitely “tongue in cheek.” So, enjoy the ride and feel free to share your take in the comments.

• SQL – ubiquitous and relational
• MDX – complex and dimensional
• DAX – formulaic and columnar
• Thoughts and musings

SQL, structured query language

SQL is the oldest of the languages. It was designed to support relational databases (RDBMS). It is built on math principles to improve performance and optimize storage. Normalization rules were established to guide developers on the preferred approaches to building databases.

Why is SQL ubiquitous?

SQL is everywhere. SQL is the query language of choice for enterprise data platforms such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Open-source data platforms like MySQL and PostgreSQL are also built to use SQL.

How is this possible? SQL is an ANSI standard. This means that the core of the language is managed by a governing body. If you learn SQL, you should be able to write queries in all these databases, right? Sort of. You should be able to write a query like this in all the databases: SELECT field1, field2 FROM table WHERE field3 = 50.

However, vendors often implement their own variations of SQL to meet needs in their platform design or to provide nonstandard functionality to their users. (Engineering outpaces standards development.) For example, Microsoft created TSQL and Oracle created PL/SQL. One of my first experiences with this was returning a single row in query. I used TOP 1 in SQL Server, but there was no TOP keyword in Oracle.

Code examples

SQL Server

SELECT TOP 1 column1, column2 
FROM table_name
WHERE condition;

Oracle

SELECT column1, column2
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
AND ROWNUM = 1;

PostgreSQL / MySQL

SELECT column1, column2
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
LIMIT 1;

What does it all mean?

You can learn SQL and be efficient querying data from multiple data platforms. Whether you are a data engineer or a data analyst, you must know SQL if you are to be taken seriously as a data professional.

MDX, multidimensional expressions

I was introduced to MDX by SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). For me, it just clicked. More about that in a bit. MDX, like SQL, is heavily based on math. Whereas SQL is two dimensional (column and rows), MDX can theoretically use an unlimited number of dimensions. The number is limited in practice by the capability of the data platform. MDX was primarily used by two vendors, Microsoft and Hyperion.

One key difference between the two platforms is their purpose. Relational databases are optimized for transactions and small result sets. Multidimensional databases are built for analysis across huge datasets.

Why is MDX considered complex?

The toughest part for most data professionals is visualizing multidimensional datasets in their minds. Relational data is easy to visualize. It looks like a spreadsheet. Multidimensional data is not that simple. We call it a cube, but that is a simplistic representation with only three dimensions. It is a cool name though.

Earlier in my career I coached data consultants on their transition to BI consultants. As I helped a consultant with MDX, I told him at some point he would “get it.” I told him to call me when he did. Six months later he called me, told me that he got it, and hung up on me. Many consultants didn’t get it and either just forced their way through it or went back to relational.

MDX was designed to traverse dimensions, build sets, and aggregate values across those sets. I mentioned earlier that MDX made sense to me right away. The first time I was exposed to MDX, I learned about the various functions and methods to work with dimensions including child, parent, descendants, and ancestors. You could think of dimensions like family trees. I took a class in college about familial relationships which used similar concepts. My degree is in cultural anthropology.

• Another difficult concept to master is context. You must understand the set or slice of data you are working with in a query.
• Once you understand context, you need to realize that every measure is an aggregate of every dimension whether a part of the query or not.
• Results can be shaped in multiple dimensions. Three or more dimensions cannot be visualized. If you want to visualize the data in a report, it needs to be formed into columns and rows.

Multidimensional databases and MDX are extremely powerful but complex. I enjoyed working with them and became one of the few experts in the technology. However, multidimensional databases and MDX are rarely used today. Microsoft is not advancing the technology, instead promoting columnar data structures.

DAX, data analysis expressions

My first experience with DAX was when PowerPivot was released with Excel. It was then that I saw the writing on the wall for MDX. DAX is simpler and more approachable than MDX. Microsoft then added tabular models built on the same data engine, Vertipaq. Eventually culminating in the Power BI model. The underlying data engine is a highly optimized columnar data structure.

Admittedly, I have the least amount of hands-on experience with DAX. However, I disliked it early on. Unlike SQL and MDX, DAX is not built around math principles and is not a query language. It is built with expressions. Instead of SELECT, it starts with an equal sign (=). This is more intuitive for Excel users. Early on, it was very frustrating for me.

DAX is continually being improved. Microsoft is also continuing to improve the underlying data engine and storage subsystem. Power BI models are one of the foundational building blocks of Microsoft Fabric.

Should you learn DAX?

If your business uses Power BI, then yes. DAX is used to aggregate, shape, and format data for usage by end users. It is not necessary for data engineers who don’t present data to end users.

Thoughts and musings

My first recommendation is to learn SQL if you want to be taken seriously as a data professional. It has been around since the beginning and will be around for a while to come. Relational data platforms are integrating columnar data storage technology which gives SQL users access to the performance available in Power BI models.

While I contend that MDX is more powerful, I concur that DAX is more approachable. As MDX goes the way of COBOL, SQL remains the powerhouse. Learn DAX if you intend to use Power BI, otherwise don’t bother.

That is my 2 cents. Have a different opinion? Sound off in the comments below.

It has been a while since my last T-SQL Tuesday blog. When I saw Mike Walsh’s topic for T-SQL Tuesday #193, I was intrigued and inspired – “Notes to yourself from the past and the future.” It has been a year and a half since I went on full time disability due to ALS. I worked for as long as I was able contribute well. It was a sad but necessary reality. This very reality feeds into my notes.

Note to my past self, ten years ago

Don’t allow others to influence you away from your passion for data excellence and leadership. When you are told that becoming a Microsoft MVP is only a personal (or selfish) endeavor and will not help the company and it doesn’t matter, DON’T LISTEN! They are showing how little they know or understand you. The same is true about your data community involvement.

I was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for my work on Microsoft Fabric about a year and a half ago. It was then I learned how much access you get to the engineering teams at Microsoft and a worldwide network of fellow pros. Throughout my years working for Microsoft partners, I have been on data partner advisory councils. I appreciated that exposure, but MVPs already knew what we were hearing for the first time. I can only imagine how I could have helped steer the technological direction of my companies with that insight.

A quick soapbox… It never ceases to amaze me how many MVPs and advisory members do not give feedback and recommendations back to Microsoft. These relationships should be mutually beneficial. From personal experience, I know that giving feedback to Microsoft is beneficial. Many times, Microsoft teams and others thought I was an MVP even though I was not. It was because of my feedback on the data platform through other channels.  …end of soapbox.

My overall point to my past self is that you should pursue the path that you see as right for you. Don’t let the naysayers deter you. You need to play to your strengths.

Note from your future self

Before I start this, living ten more years would be amazing. ALS life expectancy is 2-5 years, and I am in year four.

Don’t stop what you are doing. It will continue to be easier and more efficient for you to create. Don’t be afraid of continuing to contribute to the data community. Your mind still works. It will take a lot of patience to work with data tools that are not eye gaze friendly. Don’t let that deter you. Have fun, find a lane and run with it.

I just started getting back to technology. I created the Data on Wheels ~ ALS website, only using eye gaze technology. “Look mom, no hands!” It has been a great experience for me and got me back into technology. I tried using Power BI for the data analysis but quickly realized that I needed Microsoft Fabric to do the work I wanted to do which is out of reach financially (trial capacities are time boxed). So maybe I will see what I can do to solve that problem.

Wrapping it up

I listened to company leaders early in my career. They were wrong. I trusted their input too much. I should have sought additional advice. It would have been better for me and the companies I enjoyed working for.

Today, I have the desire but not the patience or means in some cases to data work. I enjoyed it a lot. I should not give up. I look forward to sharing what I learn.

My advice to everyone is to follow your passions and find enjoyment in your career. Seek council from many different perspectives in your pursuit.

Please note, THIS IS IN PREVIEW AND VERY NEW. I’ve included a ton of screenshots, but please be advised these may not be entirely reflective of the GA reality once this feature is released. My example uses a OneDrive folder, but you can easily do this with SharePoint as well! One caveat, you will need a Fabric capacity. This does work with a trial capacity.

1. Creating the ShortCut in OneLake to OneDrive Folder
2. Connecting to the File in Power BI
3. Creating a Refresh Schedule in Power BI Service
4. Optional – creating a manual refresh button using Translytical Task Flows
5. Additional Resources

Creating the ShortCut in OneLake to OneDrive Folder

1 – Navigate to OneDrive online: https://onedrive.live.com/login

2 – Select the settings gear in the top right corner and select “OneDrive settings”.

3 – On the left-hand panel, select “More Settings” then scroll all the way down to the Diagnostic Information. From there, copy the OneDrive web URL. This is what we will use in Fabric to make the short cut.
NOTE – you will need to delete everything in that URL after the _com (in the screenshot below that’s “_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx”.

4 – Navigate to a lakehouse in Fabric where you would like to access the content from.
5 – Hit the Get data drop down then select “New shortcut”

6 – Choose the OneDrive option. As of this post, it is currently in Preview and says “OneDrive (Preview)” on the button.

7 – Create a new connection. The Site URL will be what you copied from the OneDrive settings. I recommend renaming the connection to something like “[Name]’s OneDrive” so it’s clear where the data comes from.

8 – Now that we have a connection, you can point the shortcut to any folder in your OneDrive! Please note, it will grab all children folders inside as well as files. Be mindful of what you actually want to share within OneLake. On the bright side, this means you only need one shortcut per folder hierarchy which makes this much easier if you have files in multiple subfolders you want to share.

9 – Once you have a folder selected, it may give you an option to transform data (may just be me with CSVs and JSON files in my folders lol). You can skip this by hitting “previous” then “skip” or “Revert Changes” at the top. If you want to transform your CSVs to delta tables, simply hit next. I haven’t played around with these auto transformations yet, so if you have notes let me know! Anything with “Auto” and “Preview” scares me, so I stay away until at least the “Preview” is gone haha. Also, currently this feature does not work. Your shortcut will simply disappear into the void. Really excited to see where this ends up in the future though!

10 – Hit “Create” and boom! You can now access files from your OneDrive inside OneLake! It may take a couple of refreshes on your browser and a few seconds, but then you can go to the Files section of your lakehouse and see the files/folders in your shortcut. NOTE – at first it will show the folder title in your “Tables” section. That means it’s working. Try refreshing your browser (and give it a couple of minutes) and it will pop up in your files section. It does flash a share warning to you, don’t worry about that and just give it a bit to load in the right section. The time it takes is directly proportionate to the amount of information/size of files you’re dropping. If you look at my screenshot, you can see I have one file that’s over 4 GB. Probably not the best folder to pull in (should have gone one level deeper to avoid that file since all I want is in the CSVs folder), but I wanted to see if it can handle it.

If needed, hit the three dots next to your folder and manually move it to files section.

You can see the date modified matches what’s in your OneDrive! Now to test the syncing, let’s make a change to the dim_customer.csv.
Original view:

Change made, took 40 seconds to sync from my laptop to OneDrive then about instantly it was available in Fabric (by the time I moved to that tab and refreshed my page it was there!).

Holy cow! This is a game changer! No longer do folks need to upload files manually using the OneLake explorer (very buggy in my experience). Now you can just short cut it in and allow your ETL process to always grab the latest version that’s been shortcut to OneLake!!

So that brings us to the next phase, how does this work with Power BI? Can we finally have a “live” experience with Excel file data in Power BI?

Connecting to the File in Power BI

1 – Open up your Power BI file. This should work in both the Power BI Desktop and the web Power BI experience, but my demo will use the Desktop.

2 – Connect to the lakehouse with our files. To connect to the files within a lakehouse, we’ll have to do a custom query since the main lakehouse connector only allows you to pull tables/views. Thankfully, a connector does already exist, it’s just not in our standard Get Data options. Create a blank query, then use the code below with your workspace and lakehouse id. To find the IDs, grab from the URL (https://app.fabric.microsoft.com/groups/WORKSPACEID/lakehouses/LAKEHOUSEID?experience=fabric-developer).

let
    workspaceID = "YOUR WORKSPACE ID",
    lakehouseID = "YOUR LAKEHOUSE ID",
    Source = Lakehouse.Contents(null){[workspaceId= workspaceID]}[Data]{[lakehouseId =lakehouseID]}[Data],
    Files_Folder = Source{[Id="Files",ItemKind="Folder"]}[Data]
in
    Files_Folder

3 – Navigate to your file by clicking on the link under “Data” (likely called “Folder”) > then the link under “Content” (also probably called “Folder”) > then the link under “Content” that ties to the file you want to open (mine was called “Binary” for the file I wanted). Now interact with it like any other file import in Power Query.

CSVs are relatively simple, so I pulled in an Excel file for the screenshots below to show what it looks like if you have formatted tables in your file. It shows BOTH formatted tables and sheets! Pretty awesome!

Creating a Refresh Schedule in Power BI Service

Now all that is already pretty amazing. We no longer need to mess with crazy links from Excel and can access all our data from the same place – OneLake! But how do we refresh it?

1 – Navigate to the semantic model settings.

2 – Under “Data Source Credentials” there will be a new source called “Lakehouse”. Open the “Edit Credentials” link and authenticate using the credentials you want to be used for the refresh (can be a service account if needed, but MUST be a OAuth2 source). Right now, there’s no way to connect other than OAuth2. Not great if you want to use service principals, but service accounts are still an option.

If you don’t need “live” updates, you can stop here. However, if you’re as patient as I am, then you’ll want a way to trigger a refresh of this data on the fly from within your report. Enter, translytical task flows.

Optional – creating a manual refresh button using Translytical Task Flows

1 – Create a User Data Function item in Fabric. It will be mostly blank because all we really want is a way to trigger the report refresh. This function will accept a name parameter and return a little message alerting the user that report refresh has been kicked off. Don’t forget to hit that “Publish” button in the top right corner to actually have this be live! The publishing process can take a bit, be sure it finishes publishing before looking for it in Power BI.

Here’s the code I’ll be using:

import datetime
import fabric.functions as fn
import logging

udf = fn.UserDataFunctions()

@udf.function()
def refresh_report(name: str) -> str:
    logging.info('Python UDF trigger function processed a request.')

    return f"Welcome {name}! Your report refresh will kick off at {datetime.datetime.now()}!"

2 – Navigate to Power BI Desktop and add blank button. You can add any button, but blank looks cleanest and is easiest to make clear what we want people to do.

3 – Add a Data function action and ensure the “Refresh Report” toggle is on. This is the key functionality we are looking for.

4 – Create a measure to populate the current user’s name automatically.

User = USERNAME()

5 – Add that measure to the button by selecting the little fx option next to name.

6 – Configure your button with some text to let people know what it does.

7 – Publish and test! Enjoy your new button! Keep in mind, this will refresh the WHOLE model. My model is fairly small and quick, so not a huge deal. There’s not currently a way to have it only refresh one table using the UI, but if you want to make a more complex UDF notebook, you can have it refresh ONLY the table that’s been impacted. Talk about powerful.

I will make a follow up blog soon that will cover how to adapt this method to only refresh the table you need, so stay tuned and hit the subscribe button for a ping when new blogs are published!

UPDATE – I looked into ways to only refresh one table, but it requires using client secret credentials and cannot use semantic link, mssparkutils, or a large number of other libraries available in other notebooks in Fabric. I’m hoping this will change long-term, but for now please refer to this blog on how to use the REST API in a standard python notebook to refresh Power BI: https://medium.com/@arvind.g90/refresh-smarter-not-harder-power-bi-automation-with-rest-api-python-63923b37c9a6 .

Additional Resources

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/onelake/create-onedrive-sharepoint-shortcut
• https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-US/blog/turning-everyday-documents-from-sharepoint-and-onedrive-into-analytics-ready-data-with-onelake-shortcuts/
• https://www.sharepointdiary.com/2019/01/sharepoint-online-powershell-get-onedrive-url-of-user.html
• https://mstechtalk.com/five-ways-to-get-onedrive-url-for-a-user-in-microsoft-365/
• https://data-marc.com/2023/08/25/access-onelake-files-from-power-bi-desktop/

The search is on

I had a very basic list of needs.

• A way to subscribe
• Subscriber management
• Email subscribers

The first platform recommended by WPBeginner whose parent company is the source for many of my plug ins was Constant Contact. I then looked at HubSpot and MailChimp because I had heard of them. They met my needs but at a cost. If they had free options, they were limited in functionality. I ended up choosing Brevo which has a robust free plan.

To be clear, I needed a low to no cost solution to meet my needs and fill this gap in functionality. I do not generate income from my website, so a free option is required. Brevo fits the bill nicely.

Ancillary costs

As part of the setup, I needed to set my sender email address and domain. Both needed to be verified and compliant with the major email providers’ requirements. I had to create DKIM and DMARC records in my domain.

Little did I know that this was not a straightforward process. The email I am using is a Microsoft 365 account hosted and managed by GoDaddy. First, getting the correct entry required me to contact GoDaddy for support. They worked on the backend to get me set up and create the entries I needed for DNS.

The second requirement to make this work is to turn on Advanced Email Security. I wanted to apply this to the email I was using, but it is a domain level setting. Six emails had to be updated. The cost of this required upgrade is the most expensive single cost of my website build out. On the plus side, we are getting far less spam.

Newsletters are a bonus

When I started working with Brevo, I was not sure how to send out emails. After some digging, I discovered campaigns. I am not an email marketer, so this was not obvious to me. I created my first campaign by following the steps provided. It was very easy to do.

I used a template to create my first newsletter. It was a very intuitive process. I used clicks to add new items to the newsletter. I think you can use drag and drop also. I created a couple of test campaigns to see how it all worked. I liked what I found. I created and sent my first newsletter shortly thereafter.

I really like the metrics. They tell me the delivery rate, the opens, and the clicks for each campaign. This has been helpful to understand the effectiveness of the newsletter.

Managing subscribers

This functionality is the primary reason I wanted a solution. In Brevo, this work is done in the CRM. I started by creating a couple of lists. After I became familiar with lists, I imported a spreadsheet with family and friends who were invited to one of my children’s weddings. I used this to see who wanted to subscribe to the newsletter. I found a couple of additional lists that I imported to recruit newsletter subscribers. All the lists I used were ours and included people who we know or have expressed interest in our journey.

When I was done with the importing and recruiting, I had around 1000 contacts. About 50 were blocklisted due to hard bounces and unsubscribes. More than 80% were opened. In the end I had around 60 subscribers. Overall, this process went very well.

I also use list segments. I created segments to manage my daily email count which is limited to 300 emails a day in the free version. I am also using segments to help me welcome new subscribers.

There is more functionality in the CRM that I don’t use. Most of it is for sales pipeline like deals and tasks. I don’t have a need for this capability.

Automation

I use automation to clean up my lists. It is the most difficult feature for me because it uses drag and drop to build the workflows. I have only begun to explore its full capabilities.

Final thoughts

I really like this application. The only thing I wish I could do is embed the form that allows subscribers to modify their information into my website. I can include it in the newsletter which works for now. This is a minor inconvenience. I would recommend Brevo for individuals like me and small organizations who need these capabilities. There are many more features available in the free version and even more in the paid tiers.

Check out my website and subscribe to the newsletter.

I made so many wonderful new friends and really really enjoyed seeing so many friends over such a short period of time! Big conferences like this always feel like a reunion where we get to pull more people into the family and all learn/get excited about features together. Thank you to the organizers for all the work they did to bring us all together and make such a big conference feel easy to navigate and enjoy.

My Session

Let’s set the stage – it’s the last day of the conference, second to last session, right after lunch. I was very mentally prepared for a half-empty room of food-coma folks whose brains have already been very fried with incredible content for the week. Imagine my surprise as the room filled up immediately after lunch! I have only been speaking since 2022, but I can honestly say that this was by far one of the top 3 attendee groups I’ve ever had. Thank you to all of you who came to learn, asked insightful questions, and actually took me up on my offer to chat after the session!

So what did we learn? We chatted about how to manage data warehouse builds inside of Fabric and covered some tips and tricks from the field. We discussed dealing with case sensitivity and hunting and killing capacity killers along with how similar it is to Lakehouses under the hood. Interested to learn more? Feel free to check out my slide deck and resources from my github: https://github.com/Anytsirk12/DataOnWheels/tree/main/2025%20Presentations/2025%20FabCon%20Vienna

Things I’m Excited About

Want to see the full list? Check it out here: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/september-2025-fabric-feature-summary/

• MERGE in Data warehouse
• Workspace collation setting
• Notebooks can reach mirrored databases!
• UDFs in DAX
• Multi-tasking views (preview)
• User data functions in Fabric GA
• Materialized views in Lakehouses
• Custom calendars in DAX
• TMDL view
• Variable library GA
• Fabric MCP and CLI

The Hallway Track

If you’ve never been to a conference in person, this is where the real magic happens. Between sessions, the conversations that spark in passing over coffee cups, shared frustrations, wonderful eureka moments, and spontaneous problem-solving sessions were genuinely the highlight of the conference for me. There’s something special about the unplanned connections and deep dives that happen when you’re surrounded by people who love the same things you do. Those casual chats turned into new friendships, unexpected collaborations, and a dozen ideas I can’t wait to bring home and explore deeper. It’s the warm heartbeat of every great conference, and FabCon Vienna delivered it in the best possible way.

Are you looking for a way to justify the cost of conferences to a boss (or yourself)? The hallway track is where it’s at. For example, I had a good friend of mine who was running into issues with Microsoft stating that people were overloading a REST API and constantly hitting the API limit, but he knew nobody was calling it (or at least not that much). We chatted and I was able to build a notebook with him to grab and save the activity logs from Power BI into a lakehouse that he could share with Microsoft support as evidence that the call was only made x times a day. We ended up brainstorming throughout the conference and we were able to prove out to Microsoft what he already knew. Plus now he has a growing record of all the activities within the tenant he manages, such a powerful tool long-term!

That is just one example of many times I’ve seen or been a part of a major business issue getting resolved at a conference. That type of support from experts in the field who are extremely passionate is absolutely priceless. You also gain an army of folks that you can reach out to and who have materials you can reference if you run into issues in the future. This is how you build your village.

Data Warehouse CoreNote

Bogdan Crivat

Check out this announcement blog for all the details: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/welcome-to-fabric-data-warehouse?ft=Announcements:category

New enterprise security features – private link, customer managed encryption keys, outbound access protection

New – MERGE, varchar(max), UI-based SQL audit logs, JSON file access using openrowset, workspace collation (yay!)

Coming in Oct – Identity!

Migration assistant is GA – migrate from SQL Server or Synapse to Fabric.

Alerts & actions – data driven alerts, monitor data quality, increase productivity (summarize failed data ingestion, long running queries, etc.).

Coming soon (very tbd) – AI functions, clustering, SQL pools, Fabric Functions, faster ingest BCP, and stats refresh

Question – lakehouses have been slow, we enjoy using python notebooks. Should we have used DWH? Would it use less capacity or speed things up? Answer – no. The reason we have two is because people have different skills. DWH is better at many concurrent users, spark is better at data preparation.

No-Code, Low-code, Pro-Code: Unlocking Data Magic with Fabric Dataflows Gen2 by Cristian Angyal

“Small daily improvements over time lead to stunning results” – Robin Sharma

Dataflows Gen2 = power query. It fits within the ingest/prep step of the data lifecycle.

Demo = employee training program cost allocation & tracking. Multinational company runs monthly trainings and wants to see cost break downs by department, country, skill, by month over month. The marketing team loads all the data into Excel since they are familiar with it.

Dataflows are ideal for this use case because they can easily connect to Excel files and do a number of manipulations on this smaller dataset. The UI options to manipulate this file work, but it is not very flexible. Imagine a column name is changed, or someone forgets a space, then it will break what the UI just built.

We can make the solution much more robust and future proof using parameters for the folder paths. You can also directly split columns into rows instead of columns then unpivoting (see under “Advanced” settings in the split column UI). By default, the split by delimiter will hard code the number of columns to create, be aware that this will not work well for user entered data. So what about the column names? What if someone accidentally adds a space to the end of a column header? Let’s code for that. Instead of combining files from a folder, use “Create” then create a new column with Excel.Workbook([Content], true) and this will also us to see the data in the file. From there we will slowly replace hard coding. For example, the drill down into a file hard codes the sheet name. Use {0} instead to go down to the first sheet no matter the name. Then we created a function that allows us to pass in the custom column we made that contains the actual table. This gives us the option to load more of our steps in to the function itself to apply to any number of tables.

To get the column names, we can use the Table.ColumnNames() function then plug those values into the next step instead of allowing Power Query to hard code it. List.Select(Table.ColumnNames(TableName), each _<> “Fixed column name”) will allow you to not include columns that we don’t want to split from this process. List.Accumulate will allow you to use that list of column names and apply an “accumulator” to a table where you can pass in a function to split the columns in that list by a delaminate into new rows. Super cool! These are my kind of crazy notes, if it this sounds epic but you can’t follow my notes, reach out to Cristian! He’s a Power Query wizard and loves helping.

PowerQuery.How is also an extremely valuable resource. Custom GPT that Cristian created that is open to all = https://bit.ly/PQMagic

linktr.ee/cristiangyal

Semantic Model Optimization for Enterprise AI Enablement by Samson Truong

Goal of AI is to enable enterprise to answer business questions quickly, but it lacks business context and often runs into issues interpreting organizational knowledge like custom fiscal calendars, custom KPIs, and often returns generic answers.

Use star schemas for simplicity and performance. This allows copilot to easily interpret business units and metrics. Creating explicit relationships (don’t use treat as or use relationship) allows copilot to easily navigate your model. Strong relationships guide copilot and DAX logic.

Well-structured DAX makes a difference! Use easy to explain DAX or add comments, name intuitively, and predefine key metrics. Additionally, add in some descriptions. You can even leverage AI to generate these and simply edit the more complex use cases. Copilot only reads the first 200 characters, so lead with that.

Meaningful hierarchies can allow copilot to dive deeper and create drill downs into it’s responses.

Use data value standardization. For example, use High, Low, and Medium instead of High/Hi/1.

Define and label KPIs. Avoid making users ask for common metrics.

RLS is EXTREMELY important in the world of AI. This allows copilot to be helpful without risking security.

Tools to optimize your model for AI = best practice analyzer, Prep data for AI, AI data schemas, verified answers, AI instructions. These are all baked into Fabric which is great! Pretty cool to see the BPA run from a python notebook in Fabric. Has a very clean output. There’s also a memory optimizer that can highlight columns not being used that take up a bunch of space.