Fabric Influencers Spotlight: May 2026

[mamathews]

Welcome to the May 2026 edition of the Fabric Influencers Spotlight, a recurring monthly post here to shine a bright light on the places on the internet where Microsoft MVPs and Fabric Super Users are doing some amazing work on all aspects of Microsoft Fabric.

The Microsoft Fabric Community team has created the Fabric Influencers Spotlight to highlight and amplify blog posts, videos, presentations, and other content related to Microsoft Fabric. We’ve cultivated submissions from members of Microsoft MVPs and Fabric Super Users from the Fabric community that cover the Fabric Platform, Data Engineering & Data Science in Fabric, Data Warehousing, Power BI, Real-Time Intelligence, Data Integration, Fabric Administration and Governance and Databases.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who utilize their deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services to bring together diverse platforms, products, and solutions, to solve real world problems, and to bring “leading edge” content to the data community. To learn about the Microsoft MVP Award and to find MVPs, visit the official website.

Fabric Super Users are the heroes of the Fabric Community. They contribute helpful answers, write informative blog posts, post data stories and are key contributors to the Fabric product via engagement with the product group. To learn more about the Super User program, visit the official website.

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Power BI

Cengizhan Arslan, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Fabric Super User

Blog Post: The Decimal Tax: How Column Cardinality Is Quietly Consuming Your Fabric CU

A benchmark showing that splitting a high-cardinality decimal column into separate integer and fractional parts cuts Storage Engine scan time by 45% and total query duration by 44% on a 500-million-row Import model, with identical DAX results. The mechanism lives entirely at the VertiPaq layer: the original column carried 1.3 million distinct values, while the decomposed pair carries 70K and 122K respectively, producing smaller dictionaries, denser compression, and substantially higher segment parallelism. The article reframes a SUM over a decimal column as a storage architecture decision rather than a DAX optimisation, walks through the decomposition pattern with measure code, and is honest about where the secondary file size benefit (14% on an isolated model) dilutes at production scale.

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Data Engineering

Ilgar Zarbaliyev, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Microsoft MVP

Blog Post: Creating Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) in Azure: A Step-by-Step Guide

Modern data engineering relies on efficient and reliable data pipelines, and Microsoft Fabric Data Factory provides a powerful platform to design, orchestrate, and automate data workflows across multiple systems. With its visual interface, built-in scheduling, and monitoring capabilities, it enables scalable data movement and transformation with minimal coding. In this article, we will begin by creating an Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) account, uploading sample data, and preparing the foundation for future data pipelines.

Aleksi Partanen, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Microsoft MVP

YouTube: The Future of Fabric Lakehouses: Schema vs Non-Schema

Learn the key differences between schema-enabled and non-schema-enabled Lakehouses in Microsoft Fabric, including the new catalog, cross-workspace queries, OneLake security, shortcuts, and migration options.

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Data Science

Sahir Maharaj, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Microsoft MVP

Blog Post: Semantic Intelligence using Word2Vec and GloVe for Data Science in Microsoft Fabric

In this edition, we’re exploring the world of word embeddings and finally making sense of why they’ve become the backbone of modern NLP. You’ll get a clear feel for what embeddings actually represent, explore how Word2Vec learns meaning through prediction and why that tiny training task uncovers so much structure.

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Fabric Platform, Administrative & Governance

Vinodh Kumar, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Microsoft MVP

Blog Post: How Fabric Data Agent Actually Consumes Your Capacity: A Practical Guide to Cost Optimisation

How Fabric Data Agent works and how much cost you can expect? Some best practices on lowering the cost of the fabric data agent billing.

Rene Fuerstenberg, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Fabric Super User

Blog Post: How to Save Costs in Microsoft Fabric by Automating Capacity Start & Stop with Azure Logic Apps

This article shows how to reduce costs in Microsoft Fabric by automatically starting and stopping capacities. It explains how Azure Logic Apps can be used to control the capacity state without any manual effort. You’ll also learn which configuration steps are required and what to watch out for. The solution is simple, practical, and especially useful for development environments or scenarios that don’t require 24/7 availability.

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Databases

Inturi Suparna Babu, LinkedIn

Affiliation: Fabric Super User

Blog Post: Mirroring SharePoint Lists in Microsoft Fabric: Building a Seamless Data Bridge

In this blog, I will walk you through, how you can mirror a SharePoint List in Microsoft Fabric. We’ll explore why this capability matters and how it simplifies collaboration and the practical steps to get started. Whether you are a data engineer, analyst or simply curious about Fabric evolving ecosystem, this guide will help you unlock new possibilities by bridging SharePoint and Fabric with ease.

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Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!

That’s all for this month’s spotlight on the Microsoft Fabric Influencers. We wanted to extend our thanks to the MVPs and Super Users whose expertise continues to enrich the Fabric community. We anticipate the innovative ideas and valuable insights that will emerge in the coming months and invite everyone to stay engaged here on the Fabric Community Platform. Together, we will continue to deliver knowledge and collaboration that empowers every member of our community to achieve more. Stay tuned!