3 Things: Data Analytics Highlights from February 2024

This month's '3 Things' blog post includes topics ranging from the public preview of Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) in Power BI to new, must-read, data architecture book from a data analytics thought-leader at Microsoft.

Read on as we highlight three things for each of the three technology areas that you should be aware of from last month.

Power BI

• Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) was adopted as the semantic model file format for Power BI Project files. It is a model description language designed to make your source control and collaborative development experiences easier. Learn more.

• Copilot in Power BI gained chat-based capabilities, which enable you to summarise, interrogate, and analyse your reports with a few prompts. This and other Copilot features currently require at least an F64 or P1 SKU capacity. Learn more.

• More enhancements have been made to the column, bar, and ribbon visuals, giving you greater control over the story they tell. You can now hide the inner border, adjust the space between series, enable overlapping bars, and do other things to tweak the look and feel. Learn more.

Microsoft Fabric

• The public availability of Fabric Git APIs means you can perform common Git operations as part of automated continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) pipelines. Learn more.

• Fabric Copilot pricing was announced, and billing started on March 1st. As with other workloads in Fabric, Copilot consumes Capacity Units (CU) from the Fabric capacity assigned to your Fabric workspaces. Learn more.

• The Fabric Team provided guidance on building common data architectures with OneLake in Microsoft Fabric. The article explores the security structure, workspace roles, item permissions, compute permissions, and other important considerations. Learn more.

Azure Analytics and AI

• Databricks announced its Data Intelligence Platform on Azure for Communications. As you read through the article, you will learn about how you can use it to improve customer experiences, reduce the cost to serve, identify new revenue sources, and achieve scale and security. Learn more.

• Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is a highly performant Azure SQL service that pairs speed with scalability to handle data-intensive workloads. Learn about how it enables you to build AI-ready SQL apps and what other industry-leading companies have achieved with it. Learn more.

• There is a new ‘must read’ data architecture book by James Serra called ‘Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh’. As the name suggests, it promises to give you a firm understanding of various data architectures, the gap between architecture theory and reality, how to select the best architecture for your data analytics projects, and many other crucial topics relating to data architectures. Learn more.

Did You Find This Useful?

Get notified when we post something new by following us on X and LinkedIn.