7 min read
Slowly Changing Dimensions Without Corrupting Your Facts
Should last year's revenue move when a customer changes segment? Pick an SCD type per column, write a replay-safe Type 2 MERGE, and join facts correctly.
Data Modeling
18 articles
7 min read
Late-Arriving Data: Deciding When a Day Is Actually Done
Late data is a distribution you can measure, not an edge case. How to set a waiting policy, handle what arrives after it, and say when a number is final.
6 min read
The Grain of a Table: Declare It Before the First Join
Grain is what one row of a table means. Most wrong numbers come from a join or aggregation that quietly changed it. How to declare grain and test it.
8 min read
One Metric, One Home: Ownership Rules That Stop Drift in Fabric
How to stop metric drift in Fabric by giving every metric one home layer and one named owner, then enforcing both rules with schemas, grants and versions.
8 min read
SQL in Fabric: Give Analysts a View Layer, Not Your Tables
How I design an analyst-facing schema in Fabric Data Warehouse: views as the contract, permissions scoped to it, and SQL checks that catch breaks first.
7 min read
Fabric Warehouse: Decide Fact Table Grain Before You Tune Anything
Why fact table grain, not clustering or statistics, sets the performance ceiling in Fabric Data Warehouse, and how to declare and test it in T-SQL.
1 min read
AI-Assisted Data Modeling: Accelerating Schema Design
AI-assisted modeling reduces design time while improving schema quality.
6 min read
Drafting a Star Schema with GPT-4o and Structured Outputs
Use GPT-4o structured outputs to draft a star schema from requirements, check it with plain code, and generate Fabric Warehouse DDL that respects its limits.
1 min read
Graph Database Fundamentals for Azure Developers
Graph databases unlock powerful relationship-based queries that would be complex or impossible with traditional relational approaches.
1 min read
Hierarchical Partition Keys in Azure Cosmos DB
Traditional single partition keys can lead to hot partitions in scenarios where data is naturally hierarchical. Hierarchical partition keys solve this by…
1 min read
Sharding Strategies for Distributed PostgreSQL
The distribution column (also called the shard key) determines how data is partitioned across nodes. Citus uses consistent hashing on this column to assign…
8 min read
Power BI Automatic Aggregations (Preview): When to Let the Service Decide
How Power BI automatic aggregations train on a DirectQuery dataset's query log, what the preview requires, and when hand-built aggregations still win.
8 min read
Power BI Hybrid Tables: A Live DirectQuery Partition on Import
How Power BI hybrid tables add a DirectQuery partition to an incremental refresh policy, what the preview requires, and when Import alone is the better call.
8 min read
DirectQuery for Power BI Datasets: Extending a Certified Model
How DirectQuery for Power BI datasets lets teams extend a certified model with their own data, what the preview limits are, and when not to chain.
8 min read
Power BI Composite Models: Choosing Import, DirectQuery or Dual
How to set storage modes table by table in a Power BI composite model, when Dual earns its place, and how aggregations keep DirectQuery facts fast.
8 min read
Power BI in Early 2022: What's GA, What's Preview, What to Adopt
A status check on Power BI's newer modelling, performance and ALM features as of January 2022, with my view on which to adopt now and which to pilot.
1 min read
Dataverse Tables - Data Modeling for the Power Platform
Tables you create for your specific business needs. Connect to external data sources without importing data.
1 min read
Azure Analysis Services for Enterprise Semantic Models
A semantic model sits between raw data and end user tools, providing: Business friendly names and descriptions Calculated measures and KPIs Row level…