ArcGIS Maps for Microsoft Fabric Is Now Generally Available
ArcGIS Maps for Microsoft Fabric is now generally available, bringing advanced mapping and geospatial visualization directly into Microsoft Fabric. Explore how organizations can visualize OneLake data, work with real-time and feature layers, and turn enterprise data into location-aware insights.Reassigning a Workspace in the Microsoft Fabric Admin Portal
Reassigning a Workspace in the Microsoft Fabric Admin Portal When working with Microsoft Fabric, workspaces are an important part of organising and managing analytics content. A workspace can contain items such as Lakehouses, Warehouses, Notebooks, Data Pipelines, semantic models, and Power BI reports. Depending on how a workspace is configured, it can be assigned to different types of capacity. There may be situations where a workspace that was originally running on a Power BI Pro shared environment needs to be moved to a Microsoft Fabric Capacity. In this article, I'll show how to reassign a workspace to a Fabric Capacity using the Microsoft Fabric Admin Portal. For this demonstration, I have a workspace named task wk, which is currently assigned to the Power BI Pro workspace type. Current Workspace Configuration I have already created the following workspace: Workspace Name: task wk Workspace Type: Power BI Pro At the moment, task wk is not assigned to my Fabric Capacity. The objective is to move this same workspace from its current Power BI Pro setup and assign it to a Fabric Capacity. Rather than creating a new workspace, I can simply reassign the existing workspace. Open the Fabric Admin Portal The first step is to open the Microsoft Fabric Admin Portal. From the Fabric interface, open the settings menu and select Admin portal. The Admin Portal provides administrators with tenant-level management capabilities, including the ability to manage workspaces and their capacity assignments. For this task, I need to work with the Workspaces section. Go to the Workspaces Tab Inside the Fabric Admin Portal, select Workspaces. This section provides a view of the workspaces available within the Fabric tenant. I can search for my workspace by name rather than scrolling through the entire list. In my case, I'm looking for: task wk Once I locate the workspace, I can see its current configuration. The workspace is currently associated with the Power BI Pro workspace type. Select Reassign Workspace To change the capacity assignment, I select the ellipsis (...) next to task wk. This opens a menu containing actions that can be performed on the workspace. From the menu, I select: Reassign workspace This is the option I need to change the workspace's capacity assignment. Select the Fabric Capacity After selecting Reassign workspace, Fabric presents the available capacity options. From here, I select the Fabric Capacity that I want to assign to the workspace. The important thing is to make sure I select the correct capacity, particularly if the organisation has multiple Fabric capacities. Once the appropriate Fabric Capacity has been selected, I confirm the reassignment. Fabric then updates the workspace's capacity assignment. Verifying the Workspace After completing the reassignment, I can return to the Workspaces section in the Admin Portal and check task wk again. The workspace should now show that it is assigned to the selected Fabric Capacity rather than its previous Power BI Pro setup. The workspace itself has not been recreated. The existing workspace and its contents remain in place; what has changed is the capacity to which the workspace is assigned. This is useful because I don't need to migrate all the workspace items into a new workspace simply because I want to change the capacity. Why Reassign a Workspace? There are several reasons why an organisation might want to reassign a workspace to Fabric Capacity. One common reason is to make Fabric capabilities available to the workspace. For example, an organisation may start with a traditional Power BI workspace and later adopt Microsoft Fabric. Moving the workspace to an appropriate Fabric Capacity can be part of that transition. Capacity assignment can also be useful when an organisation wants to manage workloads using dedicated capacity rather than relying on shared capacity. A Simple Before and After In this example, the change can be summarised as: Before task wk --> Power BI Pro After the reassignment: After task wk --> Fabric Capacity The workspace name remains the same, and I don't have to create another workspace just to make the change. Things to Consider Before reassigning a workspace, it is worth checking that you have the appropriate administrative permissions and that the target Fabric Capacity is available. It is also important to understand the implications of moving a workspace between capacity types, especially in an organisation where capacity usage, governance, and licensing are carefully managed. The exact options available in the Admin Portal can also depend on the tenant configuration and the permissions of the administrator.
From ADF Inventory to a Fabric Operating Model: A Practical Migration Playbook (Part 2)
A practical guide to building a portable, metadata-driven ingestion framework for Microsoft Fabric. Learn how JSON configuration, Pipelines or Airflow orchestration, watermarks, retries, and audit tables work together to make data ingestion scalable and safe.From ADF Inventory to a Fabric Operating Model: A Practical Migration Playbook
Migrating from Azure Data Factory to Microsoft Fabric is not a one-for-one conversion. This practical playbook helps you assess existing workloads, choose the right Fabric pattern—Mirroring, Copy jobs, Pipelines, or Notebooks—and validate the move safely through metadata-driven design, reconciliation, and phased cutover.Understanding SHOWPLAN_ALL in Fabric SQL
As data engineers, we spend a significant amount of time writing SQL queries to ingest, transform, and analyze data. However, producing the correct result is only half the story. Equally important is understanding how the SQL Server Query Optimizer executes our queries. One of the most effective ways to inspect the optimizer's decisions is by using SHOWPLAN_ALL. In this article, I'll demonstrate how to use SHOWPLAN_ALL in SQL Server and Microsoft Fabric SQL Database, explain what it does, discuss a common pitfall, and show you how to resolve it. What is SHOWPLAN_ALL? SHOWPLAN_ALL is a session-level SQL Server setting that instructs the query optimizer to return the estimated execution plan instead of executing the query. Rather than returning data, SQL Server provides detailed information about the physical operators it intends to use, allowing us to understand how the query will be processed before it runs. This is particularly useful when: Investigating slow-running queries. Understanding optimizer decisions. Identifying expensive operations such as sorts and scans. Comparing different query implementations. Tuning SQL for better performance. Unlike PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or Databricks SQL, which support variations of the EXPLAIN command, SQL Server relies on SHOWPLAN_ALL and graphical execution plans. Orders Table For this walkthrough, I'll use anorders table in Fabric SQL CREATE TABLE orders ( order_id INT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, order_date DATE NOT NULL, customer VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, amount INT NOT NULL ); After populating the table with data, I'll calculate a running total using a window function. Sample Query SELECT order_id, order_date, customer, amount, SUM(amount) OVER ( ORDER BY order_date, order_id ) AS running_total FROM orders ORDER BY customer, order_date, order_id; Without any execution plan settings enabled, SQL Server executes the query normally and returns the dataset. Viewing the Estimated Execution Plan To inspect how SQL Server intends to execute the query, enable SHOWPLAN_ALL. SET SHOWPLAN_ALL ON; GO SELECT order_id, order_date, customer, amount, SUM(amount) OVER ( ORDER BY order_date, order_id ) AS running_total FROM orders ORDER BY customer, order_date, order_id; GO Instead of returning rows from the orders table, SQL Server returns an estimated execution plan describing the physical operations that would be performed. Although the exact operators depend on the optimizer and available indexes, the execution plan typically resembles the following sequence: Read the data from the orders table. Perform any required sorting for the window function. Compute the running total using the Window Aggregate operator. Apply the final ORDER BY. Return the results. This visibility into the optimizer's decision-making process is invaluable when diagnosing performance issues. A Common Pitfall One of the most common mistakes developers make is assuming that SHOWPLAN_ALL only affects the next query. It doesn't. SHOWPLAN_ALL is a session-level setting. Once enabled, every subsequent query in the same session returns an execution plan instead of executing. For example, after running: SET SHOWPLAN_ALL ON; GO Even a simple query such as: SELECT * FROM orders; returns the execution plan rather than the table data as seen below If you're unaware that SHOWPLAN_ALL is still enabled, it can be quite confusing because every query appears to "stop working." The Solution The fix is straightforward. Disable the session setting. SET SHOWPLAN_ALL OFF; GO After turning it off, SQL Server immediately resumes normal execution. Running the same query again returns the expected dataset. Why This Happens Many SQL Server settings persist for the duration of the current session. SHOWPLAN_ALL is one of them. Other commonly used session-level settings include: SHOWPLAN_XML STATISTICS IO STATISTICS TIME NOCOUNT Understanding session scope is important when troubleshooting unexpected SQL Server behavior, particularly during performance tuning. As data volumes continue to grow, query performance becomes increasingly important. Execution plans provide insights that cannot be obtained simply by reading the SQL statement. They help answer questions such as: Is SQL Server performing a Table Scan or an Index Seek? Is an unnecessary Sort operation occurring? Which operator consumes the highest estimated cost? Is the optimizer using a Window Aggregate efficiently? Can the query be rewritten to reduce resource consumption? These are exactly the questions that distinguish writing SQL from engineering performant SQL solutions. Key Takeaways If you regularly work with SQL Server or Microsoft Fabric SQL Database, keep the following in mind: SHOWPLAN_ALL returns the estimated execution plan without executing the query. It is a session-level setting, not a one-time command. Every query continues returning execution plans until the setting is explicitly disabled. Use SET SHOWPLAN_ALL OFF to restore normal query execution. Learning to interpret execution plans is an essential performance tuning skill for data engineers and database professionals. Final Thoughts Window functions, Common Table Expressions (CTEs), and complex analytical queries are becoming increasingly common in modern data platforms. While writing these queries correctly is important, understanding how the SQL Server Query Optimizer executes them is what enables us to build scalable and efficient data solutions. SHOWPLAN_ALL offers a simple yet powerful way to inspect the optimizer's strategy before a query is executed. Combined with graphical execution plans and tools such as STATISTICS IO and STATISTICS TIME, it forms an essential part of every data engineer's SQL performance tuning toolkit. The next time you're optimizing a query, don't just verify that it returns the correct result—take a few minutes to examine how SQL Server plans to execute it. The insights you gain can often reveal opportunities for significant performance improvements.OneLake Security + Shortcuts: The RLS Architecture That Actually Holds Up in Production
You configure row-level security on your gold Lakehouse. You test it rows filter correctly. You ship it. Two weeks later, another team creates a shortcut from their workspace and discovers they see every row. This isn't a Fabric bug. It's the consequence of conflating Power BI RLS, SQL endpoint security policies, and OneLake Security and assuming they propagate through shortcuts the same way. They don't. This article is the reference I wish I'd had.Choosing the Right Way to Run Python in Microsoft Fabric
Fabric gives us several ways to run Python, and at first they can look overlapping. In this post, I share the practical decision model I use to choose the right option based on execution mode, compute engine, and data access path. If you are code-first and want fewer wrong turns when moving from exploration to production, this guide is for you.Direct Lake Is Changing the Lakehouse vs Warehouse Debate in Microsoft Fabric
Most Fabric discussions still focus on Lakehouse versus Warehouse. I believe that's increasingly the wrong question. Thanks to Direct Lake, many organizations can now go directly from Lakehouse to Power BI without introducing a Warehouse layer. But there are important trade-offs and hidden performance considerations that every Fabric architect should understand before making that choice. Let's dive into what really drives the decision.
