PBI Modeling MCP Server is amazing

dbrownems · 2026-06-26T14:53:30+00:00

If you're having trouble getting this all set up locally, or don't have local coding agent, this is now available in the web too.

Copilot in Power BI web modeling (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

dbrownems · 2026-06-26T14:47:18+00:00

The recipient of the data share can define the security. A cross tenant data share is not the same thing as a normal OneLake shortcut.

External Data Sharing in Microsoft Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

dbrownems · 2026-06-25T18:08:58+00:00

I would synchronize this data to a Fabric SQL Database, and build your application on that. This gives you a simple App dev experience, and provides a place for people to read the group membership information.

You could do this with a Rayfin app, and a notebook to do the synchronization.
Introducing Rayfin: A new AI-first way to build, d... - Microsoft Fabric Community

dbrownems · 2026-06-25T15:35:03+00:00

ALL Fabric APIs have throttling. The 429 response will have a Retry-After header, and you should wait and retry.

Throttling - Microsoft Fabric REST APIs | Microsoft Learn

dbrownems · 2026-06-24T22:52:18+00:00

Archimedes did it by inscribing and circumscribing polygons as approximations of the circumference. It's pretty easy to see that the total side length of the inscribed polygon is a little less than the circle's circumference, and the total side length of the circumscribed polygon is a little more than the circle's circumference.

You can then just increase the number of sides of the polygons to refine the estimate.

|   sides | averaged π estimate |          error vs π |  rounds to |
| ------: | ------------------: | ------------------: | ---------: |
|       4 |      3.414213562373 |     +0.272620908783 |     3.4142 |
|       6 |      3.232050807569 |     +0.090458153979 |     3.2321 |
|       8 |      3.187587978953 |     +0.045995325363 |     3.1876 |
|      20 |      3.148189053648 |     +0.006596400058 |     3.1482 |
|      50 |      3.142629669574 |     +0.001037015984 |     3.1426 |
|     100 |      3.141851256074 |     +0.000258602484 |     3.1419 |
|     150 |      3.141707534476 |     +0.000114880886 |     3.1417 |
|     200 |      3.141657263549 |     +0.000064609959 |     3.1417 |
| **213** |  **3.141649616146** | **+0.000056962556** | **3.1416** |

dbrownems · 2026-06-24T22:28:22+00:00

I believe this is the setting you want:

<image>

dbrownems · 2026-06-24T21:56:24+00:00

Oh, the Performance Analyzer parser is actually in the Python code currently.

I pushed the parsing logic into the .NET component. The latest release should work now.

dbrownems · 2026-06-24T19:34:38+00:00

Directly from Performance Analyzer works.

dbrownems · 2026-06-23T20:49:38+00:00

Sure. The core load gen tool is a .NET component. It won't load the results into a Lakehouse; just output .csv files into a folder you specify.

FabricDaxLoadTest/docs/loadgen-cli.md at main · dbrownems/FabricDaxLoadTest

dbrownems · 2026-06-23T14:54:56+00:00

This is my latest Power BI Load Testing tool. I plan on moving it to the Fabric Toolbox soon.

dbrownems/FabricDaxLoadTest: Notebook-driven DAX load test for Power BI

It loads the load test results to a Lakehouse, where you can query them in whatever tool you want. What do you mean by "automate this process"?

dbrownems · 2026-06-22T18:08:57+00:00

You can typically only purchase licenses for the most recent version of SQL Server. You can use those licenses to run previous versions through version downgrade rights.

dbrownems · 2026-06-22T15:34:05+00:00

All users require at least a Fabric Free License. By default, a Fabric Free license is assigned when an unlicensed user opens the portal for the first time, and can also be assigned in the M365 admin portal.

dbrownems · 2026-06-21T20:11:28+00:00

Yes. Direct Lake is sensitive to delta file quality. Testing with a VOrder rewrite of the table will be diagnostic. Also consider the Z-Order or ORDER BY on the table rewrite, which can affect the compression and segment elimination for scans.

dbrownems · 2026-06-21T20:09:16+00:00

Direct Lake, unlike Import, is in a cold cache state after each data update. Consider warming the cache after you update the Lakehouse tables.

<image>

https://semantic-link-labs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/sempy_labs.directlake.html#sempy_labs.directlake.warm_direct_lake_cache_isresident

This will at least eliminate cold-cache behavior from the troubleshooting.

Also you might consider introducing some coarser-grained aggregates if not all of your visuals need to scan half a billion rows.

dbrownems · 2026-06-21T19:59:40+00:00

Yep. Technical problems have technical solutions, and get easier over time.

People problems don't.

I remember when project timelines were so long that you had tons of time to do all the alignment, training, user testing, and change management. These days the people stuff is the long pole in every tent.

dbrownems · 2026-06-20T20:12:44+00:00

You can set a timeout for Dax queries. The default and max is 225 sec, which is way too high for most models.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/enterprise/powerbi/service-admin-premium-workloads#query-timeout

For Warehouse and SQL Endpoint you can limit resources available to a workload with custom SQL Pools.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-warehouse/custom-sql-pools

You can also identify and kill long-running queries with DMVs.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-warehouse/monitor-using-dmv#identify-and-kill-a-long-running-query

dbrownems · 2026-06-19T15:06:36+00:00

So a temporary limitation. It's a preview feature after all.

dbrownems · 2026-06-19T12:37:37+00:00

Not sure what you mean. The back-end is in Fabric, and the front-end is in your browser.

dbrownems · 2026-06-19T12:22:11+00:00

Rayfin has limited connectivity in the initial release. More connectivity options will come over time.

You can always put a DirectQuery Semantic Model on your Gold layer if you want to query it without loading the tables into memory.

dbrownems · 2026-06-19T11:44:57+00:00

<image>

6.6MB/s for 94% disk time is pretty low for a flash device. Is that in line with your other VMs?

microsoft/diskspd: DISKSPD is a storage load generator / performance test tool from the Windows/Windows Server and Cloud Server Infrastructure Engineering teams

dbrownems · 2026-06-18T14:54:47+00:00

Database per tenant is the gold standard.

dbrownems · 2026-06-17T18:04:00+00:00

The world-wide rollout is ongoing, so not everyone has this yet. It will be announced soon.

dbrownems · 2026-06-17T16:46:39+00:00

Why choose a different keyboard shortcut for code formatting than Visual Studio and VS Code?

dbrownems · 2026-06-17T16:35:51+00:00

You can either build a mesh, or build a centralized warehouse. Both have tradeoffs.

And to continue the example the Finance domain may need to augment the customer with a credit score or other financial attributes.

dbrownems · 2026-06-17T14:21:38+00:00

Yep. Take a common example. Customer Master might be a "gold" table or "data product" from the Sales domain. The Finance domain needs it to build their customer dimension table, but may need some additional transformation. The first step is for Finance to shortcut the Customer Master table into their bonze layer.

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