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2023 AI Year in Review: Microsoft's AI Transformation (Part 2)
Microsoft's 2023 felt like an all-in moment: platform bets, product integration, and commercial commitments that reshaped the enterprise AI landscape. From…
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Thoughts on data engineering, cloud architecture, and technology. 2205 articles and counting.
Showing 24 of 2205 posts — page 40 of 92
1 min read
2023 AI Year in Review: The Year Everything Changed (Part 1)
2023 will be talked about for a long time in AI circles — the year foundation models moved from research labs into the backbone of enterprise software. From…
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Assistants Retrieval Tool: Building Knowledge Assistants
For many teams, the Assistants API's Retrieval tool removes the most tedious parts of building a knowledge assistant — you upload documents and the…
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Code Interpreter: AI-Powered Data Analysis
Code Interpreter (Advanced Data Analysis) is the single most productive AI tool I've used for exploratory analysis — it runs Python in a sandbox, opens…
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Assistants API: File Handling and Knowledge Retrieval
I prefer the Assistants API's file-based retrieval when I need a fast, low-friction knowledge assistant — upload a set of documents and let the assistant…
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Assistants API Deep Dive: Threads and Messages
Threads and Messages are the state management primitives in the Assistants API, and understanding how they work changes how you architect multi-turn…
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Azure OpenAI Assistants API: Enterprise AI Agents
The Azure OpenAI Assistants API — launched in preview on Azure shortly after the OpenAI DevDay announcement in November 2023 — is the stateful AI agent…
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LLM Benchmarking: Evaluating Models for Your Use Case
LLM benchmarking methodology matters more than the benchmark scores themselves, because the standard public benchmarks (MMLU for general knowledge…
2 min read
Open Source LLMs: Comparing Llama, Mistral, and Beyond
The open-source LLM landscape in late 2023 is richer than most enterprise teams have had time to evaluate — and the pace of model releases (Llama 2 in July…
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Llama 2 on Azure: Meta's Open-Source Models in Production
Llama 2 on Azure arrived through the Azure Model Catalog as a managed deployment option, making Meta's open-source family — 7B, 13B, 70B, and their Chat…
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Mistral 7B on Azure: Exploring Open-Source LLM Deployment
Mistral 7B — released by Mistral AI on September 27, 2023 with a permissive Apache 2.0 licence — is the open-source model that forced a recalibration of…
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Azure Model Catalog: Choosing the Right AI Model
The Azure Model Catalog (available in Azure AI Studio and Azure ML) is where Microsoft is building the answer to the model selection question — "which…
4 min read
Microsoft Fabric is GA: What We Learned from Six Months of Preview
Microsoft Fabric reached General Availability at Ignite 2023 — November 15-17 in Seattle — and it's the outcome I genuinely thought might take another six…
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Azure AI Studio: Building Enterprise AI Applications
Azure AI Studio arrived at Ignite 2023 as a significantly expanded platform — and "expanded" is the right word, because it builds on Azure ML Studio's…
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Copilot in Microsoft Fabric: AI-Powered Analytics
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric was announced at Ignite 2023 as the AI-powered natural language layer across the Fabric experience. The capabilities at launch…
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Microsoft Purview and Fabric: Enterprise Data Governance
Microsoft Purview and Fabric integration is the enterprise governance story that matters most for regulated industries and large organisations where data…
2 min read
Data Lineage in Microsoft Fabric: Tracking Data Flow
Data lineage in Fabric — the ability to trace where a piece of data came from, what transformations it passed through, and what items depend on it — is…
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Fabric Endorsement: Certifying Trusted Data Products
Fabric endorsement — the Promoted and Certified badge system for Fabric items — is a lightweight but important trust signal in a self-service analytics…
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Fabric Domains: Organizing Your Data Mesh
Fabric Domains are the tenant-level organisational construct that lets large enterprises apply data mesh principles to their Fabric deployment — grouping…
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Fabric Governance: Building a Secure Data Platform
Fabric governance is where the platform's SaaS architecture creates both an advantage and a complication for enterprise security teams. The advantage…
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Microsoft Fabric Licensing and Capacity Planning Guide
Fabric licensing is genuinely different from the Azure pay-as-you-go mental model that most Azure practitioners are familiar with, and understanding the…
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Microsoft Fabric GA: The Unified Data Platform Revolution
Microsoft Fabric reaching General Availability at Ignite 2023 (November 15-17) is the milestone that transforms the six-month public preview from an…
1 min read
Enhanced Function Calling in GPT-4 Turbo
Parallel function calling in GPT-4 Turbo is the DevDay improvement to function calling that changes what's architecturally practical with AI agents.…
2 min read
Seed Parameter: Achieving Reproducible LLM Outputs
The seed parameter introduced in GPT-4 Turbo at DevDay 2023 is a useful addition for testing and debugging, but it's important to understand what…