Paul Turley's SQL Server BI Blog
sharing my experiences with the Microsoft data platform, Fabric, enterprise Power BI, SQL Server BI, Data Modeling, SSAS Design, SSRS, Dashboards & Visualization since 2009
Turning Fabric on is the easy part — knowing where to click first is what actually saves you a headache. Here’s the tenant-capacity-workspace nesting to keep straight, where the Admin portal actually lives, and the five settings worth locking down before you invite anyone in.
Recently, I made an employment transition that felt like getting off an extremely turbulent roller coaster ride, thinking “I survived the experience, but I never want to do that again!” I’m at a smaller firm that feels more like a team than a big corporate machine. This has caused serious reflection and raised the question: “why are we doing this?” What motivates the consultants who provide services to customers and how does that translate into the quality of the work they perform?
As I’m writing this, it is early morning in a small cottage in a quaint fishing village in Iceland. My girlfriend and I hope to see the Northern Lights and explore volcanos and waterfalls here on our way to a community conference in Denmark. We will visit New Zealand and Australia later this year on similar “working vacations”. These trips are possible because my profession connects me with a community of user group leaders and independent IT professionals who also navigate the fine line between work and pleasure. I absolutely love what I do and love to share it with other people. That’s why I’m a consultant.
Where are the Experts?
What motivates people who are truly passionate about their craft — particularly data consultants? Where can consulting customers look to find the experts who will be invested in seeing customer solutions through to completion? Executive leaders of the big company that I recently left had the idea – and built their business model – that they could find small consulting companies who employed the most talented and capable technology experts in the industry, that they could assimilate a huge company of expert consultants and lead the industry. With investment backing, they would buy up all these little companies, use the experienced workforce to be the senior team leaders and then use offshore staff to do the ongoing work and widen their profit margin. What could possibly go wrong with such a plan?
Fabric doesn’t erase what you already know from Power BI Premium or Azure Synapse — it mostly renames familiar furniture. Here’s how Premium capacities map to Fabric SKUs, how Synapse splits into Fabric experiences, and what to check before you migrate.
Microsoft Fabric brings data engineering, data warehousing, real-time analytics, and Power BI together into one SaaS platform built on OneLake. Here’s a plain-English look at why that consolidation matters, how Fabric compares to Synapse, Databricks, and Snowflake, and what this series will cover as we work through practical adoption.
Amid the AI frenzy, there is a lot of conversation about how business users will use agentic chat to answer business questions rather than interactive, dashboard-style reports. Is there truly a shift in the industry, and is agentic analytics going to change the way most business users consume data?
Just how viable is the whole “chat with your data” option, and is it really a replacement for conventional reporting? I recently heard a VP-level leader at a large consulting firm say something to the effect of “we need to stop investing in dashboard-building skills and focus on creating AI-driven data analysis solutions for our consulting customers.” I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that was the sentiment. Are all business leaders across the industry giving up their dashboards, interactive visual reports and scorecards in exchange for AI chat? No. Of course they aren’t — but conversational analysis is a new way to consume business data.
What do I want to learn at FabCon this year? I have high expectations for the FabCon conference during the week of March 16-20, 2026. With over 30,000 organizations actively using Fabric in production, I expect to hear much more about what we’ve learned, how to plan, optimize and monitor Fabric solutions rather than marketing rhetoric about new and upcoming features. There will be announcements and I’m interested in the long-term product vision, but I am anxious to learn more from others who are in the trenches and using Fabric day-to-day.
Visit Me in the Community Lounge
I will be in the community lounge expert’s area from 9 to 11 on Thursday answering questions about Fabric certifications. I have a new O’Reilly book on the PL-300 exam and recently delivered Fabric certification prep sessions for the DP-600 and DP-700 exams.
Back in September 2025, about four months ago, I made this earlier post, as we were just gaining early experience…
This post is part of a series of excerpts from my forthcoming book “Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Associate Study…
My new book “Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Associate Study Guide” from O’Reilly Press is really two books in one. When O’Reilly approached me about writing a study guide for the PL-300 exam, one of the most popular Microsoft certification exams, I said that I wanted to be a two-part book to help exam candidates join the thriving Power BI community followed by a guide for using Power BI in real-world applications in accordance with industry best practices. The second half of the book is focused on how to apply best-practice design after learning the Power BI building blocks. Some of the content in the second half of the book is updated and elaborated material from earlier blog posts and 2025 posts I will reference in this blog series. As of this post in January 2026, the online book is available as an early release through the O’Reilly subscription service and scheduled to be delivered through booksellers like Amazon early this year.
I had the pleasure of hosting eight hours of two-hour-long study group sessions for the Microsoft-sponsored Fabric Data Days in November and December. The event was coordinated and promoted by the Fabric and Power BI Community. As a group, we reviewed live demonstrations and preparation materials for the DP-600 Data Analyst Engineer exam. I’m proud to say that all of the attendees who participated in the four sessions have since passed the exam!
Whether you or your employer are interested in certification, Microsoft have done a remarkable job identifying three important roles related to BI and analytical reporting projects. There are three certification exams that effectively define the roles associated Power BI and the Fabric data platform.
Enterprise BI Solutions Need Analytics Engineers…
How do Copilot and Agentic AI change the way business users will interact with organizational data? Is the platform ready and are we ready to embrace it? AI agents and assistants are part of our daily lives. LLM-driven agents like Alexa, Siri, Gemini and Grok provide entertainment, perform requested tasks and answer questions with varying degrees of accuracy and reliability. Sometimes they misunderstand and provide out-of-left-field responses for simple questions. I might ask: “Show me the best practices for my model.” and get: “Of course! Here’s a detailed guide on runway walking techniques and how to maintain a confident posture during a fashion show.”
This series of posts will focus on how to prepare Microsoft Fabric and Power BI semantic models to support effective self-service reporting and analysis using Copilot.
My Dad and I did a lot of fishing when I was young. Back then, we fished for wild trout…
This post is part of a series of excerpts from my forthcoming book “Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Associate Study…
I’m a big fan of Power BI but that doesn’t mean that I’m not open to using different reporting and analytical tools in an enterprise modern data platform. People love Tableau with its long history as a leading visual dashboard and report design tool. Is Tableau an effective dashboarding and analytic reporting tool for a solution built using Microsoft Fabric? As I investigated this question for a new consulting client, my goal was to put aside any product prejudice I might have and approach the question with as little bias as possible.
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…
It is no secret that the AI revolution has started. Most every modern business application has an agent, a copilot or assistant asking to help write a document or take meeting notes. Nearly every banking or telecom customer service site greets us with a chatbot. Microsoft Teams meetings are concluded with Copilot summarizing the discussion and talking points. Like Chat GTP, Copilot serves as a next-level search engine that can spit-out code snippets and summaries from blog posts and product documentation, but what’s next? When can I say “hey, Copilot, gather up data from our company line of business databases and forecast next year’s profitability by month and region.” Will AI reach that level of sophistication? Before we get into AI, let’s cover a topic that is super basic and super important in this context.
Fabric Solution Architecture and Power BI…
