Microsoft Fabric update - Jan '25

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 And we're back. After Microsoft's traditional extended xmas shutdown, it's time to roundup the key features Microsoft released in January.


Grab a cupa, and get ready for what promises to be a fairly lengthy post. First up, Power BI.


Power BI

For the lucky few with an F64 SKU, the new 'answer a question about the data' feature should have just landed for copilot in Power BI. With the ability to personalise these using the Q&A features in Power Bi desktop, they have real promise to help the C-Suite reliably answer regular questions without needing an analyst.

As with all things copilot, do thoroughly test for hallucinations before letting it lose with end users. Whilst Microsoft have done a good job of reducing them, the tech isn't perfect yet.


Next up, explore this data (preview feature). This allows us to take a visual in a report as the starting point for train of thought analysis. By clicking on the three dots a new window pops up alowing data to be added, graphs changed, etc. For such a mature product, this one has taken a fair while to get implemented but it's a great step forward. Let's hope Microsoft break the habbit and this one isn't in public preview for an abnormally long time.


When it comes to the storytelling in Powerpoint feature, Microsoft have changed how the rest works. Allowing you to reset a visual without having to remove and readd it every time data was updated. It's good to see this pain point solved, but it really shouldn't have been a thing given how long we've had this option.

Lastly in this section, we need to be aware that editing Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI is now on by default. All while still being a preview feature. Honestly, it's this stuff that's really frustrating. If it's not good enough to be considered GA, don't turn it on by default. If it's good enough to turn on by default, let's get this stuff GA and recommended for use in production. This half way house and keeping stuff in public preview for months is ridiculous.

Other than that, we've got updates to various visuals and a number of preview features. For more detail on those hit the Fabric official blog.


Platform

When it comes to platform, we've had a bit of a preview that folder support for Git is comming by the end of Feb. Personally, I've not had hands-on exposure to this one but from the screenshots in the blog it looks like they've fixed the Synapse frustrations. For those that haven't used Synapse, in that product the git integration stores the folders as metadata. So you end up with a nicely formatted Synapse UI but Git is an absolute mess. Thankfully this looks to have been sorted, and hopefullly renames are being handled better than Synapse as well.


It looks like the rename does have a known issue with it unfortunately, and Microsoft have provided a recommended workaround in the blog.

OneLake

Nothing major this month, a couple of changes to add filtering and further info to the OneLake catalogue. Realistically I don't think we'll see much in this space until the new OneLake security model comes out.

Data Engineering

The big update this month in this space is Notebook live versioning. By automatically adding checkpoints every 5 minutes, Fabric will allow us to undo that code delete that with hindsight we didn't mean to make - as well as integrating git blame, diff, and restore. I've used similar features in other tools and they can be an absolute lifesaver, so great to see this added.

For those in production, we've got a new version of the runtime (1.3). We've also been told that support for certain features on 1.2 will be ending soon. Personally, I'd start looking at testing upgrades to 1.3 now so it's not such a rush when support for 1.2 completely ends.

If you're using the spark job definitions, the great news is that you can now schedule these as a service principle instead of having a shared account they run under - or dare I say someones personal account (I'm sure at least one person will have done that). If you are in that boat, definately the time to get a service principle setup and reconfigure your spark jobs.

Last up is a vastly under-appreciated feature, enhanced lineage for Notebooks. I'm sure we've all made changes that have unintended consequences. The new uppdates mean that it should be easier than ever to identfy these through impact analysis before a change is made. It's not going to stop it happening completely, but anything that makes this easier for new developers is always welcome.

Warehouse

We've got a number of minor updates to Warehousing in Fabric. Nothing ground breaking, but they all add up. If you are using a Warehouse, hit up the blog.

Still confused as to Lakehouse vs Warehouse? Microsoft have a good article on it. My view is that Warehouses really only serve two purposes today:
  1. Simplify migration from an existing setup
  2. Help drive adoption when teams don't have the skills to maintain a Lakehouse but do have strong Warehouse skills
  3. When the budget holder has a strong prefence for Warehouse over Lakehouse (normally driven by 2)
Other than that, a Lakehouse should be the default option given the ability to support both structured and unstructured data. With the SQL endpoint, it gives the best of both worlds.

Databases

Whilst still in public preview, I'm hearing that they are starting to be used in production setups due to the power they offer. Personally I think this is a bit high risk, but it seems others are being less risk adverse. Given this, I'm going to offer thoughts on new features without the usual warning about public preview on this object.

This month the big feature is Azure private link support for databases. Meaning traffic between the database and front end can now be routed through a vnet using a private link - instead of going over the public internet. If you are using Databases, really go configure this now. You want traffic going over the Microsoft backbone instead of the internet. The fact that this hasn't been supported till this month is why I always recommend waiting for GA before using features. This should have been available when Microsoft announced Databases.

Other than that, you guessed it, you get a copilot.

Real-time intelligence (RTI)

Big one in this space is that the ALM (application lifecycle management) and APIs for RTI are now GA. Meaning that we're at last at the stage that RTI use cases in Fabric can be recommended for production without carrying risks that would otherwise need to be acceppted.


Mirroring

For those using Mirroring we've got a number of updates that have been announced to improve object setups. Unfortunately nothing for on-premise - that still has no mirroring over the gateway and issues with column indicies.

Mirroring also doesn't have GA git support (looks like Microsoft missed that promise of having all that stuff sorted by end of '24). So use at your own risk.

The good news is for those using SAP, 3rd party support is now available to open up SAP mirroring. It's based on open mirroring so isn't GA. But given how challenging SAP data can be to work with, this might be one of those cases that it's worth the risk of using a public preview setup.


Gen2 dataflows

Again another object that gets preview CI/CD and Git integration (yep Microsoft missed that self imposed deadline). Other than that, it's minor UI tweeks for the Power Query editor.

That wraps up this months release notes. If you've something that you want to see covered in this blog series, drop me a note below, on Reddit, or via LinkedIn and I'll look into it.

 

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