I don't know if anyone else is excited about the deprecation of Default Semantic Models, but I surely am. We NEVER use them and always build our own for various reason. I love that they are going away and will no longer clutter up our workspaces. How does everyone else feel? Anyone here actually use them for production? Sunsetting Default Semantic Models – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric

The DP-600 exam is great for giving you an appreciation for a wide range of topics, but does it really prepare you for life as an Analytics Engineer? From speaking with a few of you, it seems you don't feel ready or comfortable yet, which is completely understandable! The DP-600 tests your understanding of the theory, but in the real world, you are measured by your experience and ability to build solutions (how you can apply the theory). As such, I always advise for people to get hands-on as early and as frequently as possible. One of the best Microsoft resources is this list of hands-on exercises which guide you through a number of scenarios, and help you build confidence with the different tools that Fabric provides. Have you tried these resources yet? Let me know what you think! PS: I'm thinking about building a collection of hands-on tutorials which cover a lot of the core analytics engineering/ data engineering (and maybe wider?) tasks that you could expect in your career - would you find that useful?

For those preparing to take the DP-600 exam, the Microsoft Reactor Youtube channel just concluded a 3-session series titled 'Get Certified! Fabric Analytics Engineer (DP-600)' to help you further understand and prepare for the exam. Along with this, the Microsoft Fabric Community team will be offering 5,000 free DP-600 exam vouchers to eligible Fabric Community members early next month. All you have to do to qualify for the free voucher is 1. Join the Microsoft Fabric community https://aka.ms/IamReady/Community?ocid=iamready_ignite24_azdata 2. Complete the Official DP-600 collection on MSLearn 3. Complete the 'Get Certified! Fabric Analytics Engineer (DP-600)' series To make it easier, links to the sessions will be shared below, be sure to check them out: Session 1: The Benefits of Getting Certified in DP-600 By Lucrecia Krause She discussed the new analytics skills a candidate will need to learn while preparing for this exam, especially coming from a PowerBI background and also Showed some numbers on how the certification has helped previous candidates in their job including reported salary increases and promotions Session 2: Tips & tricks for Microsoft Fabric DP-600 exam day By Heidi Hasting Session 3: How to prepare to pass the Microsoft Fabric DP-600 exam By Stephanie Bruno . Some tips she shared include - Complete all the fabric learn modules and also take advantage of the 'Learn together' series on the Microsoft PowerBI Youtube page https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1N57mwBHtN0-AJVURyfqbdmX65JMXSVv - Take the practice assessment as often as you can and also learn how to navigate Microsoft learn to find answers to questions you don't know - Get hands on with fabric before writing the exam - review the DP-600 to identify your knowledge gaps - Then dig around in the official documentation, including the end to end tutorials as not everything is covered in the learn modules

If you're trying to keep up with the product updates released last week at FabCon Europe, this article provides a handy list of the updates related to Data Factory: 👉🔗 Read more here: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/recap-of-data-factory-announcements-at-fabric-community-conference-europe?ft=All Let me know which of these is going to be most useful for you and your company! 👀 👇

So now we have confirmation of the new features that are being launched at FabCon. There are three main places to look: - The September 2024 Fabric Update Blog - Arun Ulag's summary of the announcements, which is also useful - If you like video, you can watch the Microsoft YouTube video on the updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWQMlt9ikE0 It will take a few hours (or days/ weeks) to digest everything that's in there, but a few that caught my eye on first look: General: - Git Integration is now GA - New Fabric Terraform provider has been released (Preview), to enable infrastructure-as-code/ automation. - Access Databricks Unity Catalog tables from Fabric (public preview) Data Warehouse - T-SQL NOTEBOOKS! This is really cool - and opens up new options for Data Analytics (who know T-SQL), I mentioned this in my latest video. - Delta column mapping in the SQL analytics endpoint (public preview) - this allows users to be a bit more liberal with column names (including spaces, if that's your jam) Data Engineering - Support for spaces in Lakehouse Delta table names - T-SQL Endpoint now working on Lakehouse with Schemas (but Lakehouse Schemas still preview: use with caution!).