Gethyn Ellis - Leveraging Microsoft Fabric: A Strategic Guide to Building a Data-Driven Business

Session abstract

In today's fast-paced business environment, harnessing the power of data is crucial for driving strategic decisions and gaining a competitive edge. "Leveraging Microsoft Fabric: A Strategic Guide to Building a Data-Driven Business" is a comprehensive training day designed to equip professionals with the skills and knowledge to build robust data infrastructure using Microsoft Fabric. This session will walk participants through the cutting-edge methodologies and practices for setting up a Lakehouse, utilizing delta tables with Apache Spark, creating a medallion architecture, and analysing data within a data warehouse. Each module is carefully crafted to provide a hands-on experience, ensuring attendees grasp and apply theoretical concepts in practical scenarios.

Modules Overview

1. Create a Lakehouse: Begin with the fundamentals of Microsoft Fabric by creating a Lakehouse — a hybrid data management system that combines the best features of data lakes and warehouses. Participants will learn how to set up a workspace, create a Lakehouse, upload data files, and perform SQL and visual queries for comprehensive data analysis, culminating in creating insightful reports with Power BI.

2. Use Delta Tables in Apache Spark: Dive into the world of Delta Lake and Apache Spark to manage batch and streaming data effectively. This section covers the entire process of creating and managing both managed and external delta tables, exploring data with notebooks, and implementing SQL for table management. Discover the advantages of versioning with Delta Lake, simulate IoT data streaming, and understand how delta tables can efficiently serve as sinks for streaming data.

3. Create a Medallion Architecture in a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse: Explore the concept of medallion architecture within a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse, from setting up the environment to uploading data to the bronze layer, transforming it for the silver and gold Delta tables, and data modelling and relationship creation for a semantic model. This comprehensive exercise encapsulates data ingestion, transformation, and preparation for analysis, focusing on creating a semantic model and generating reports from the gold layer data.

4. Analyse Data in a Data Warehouse: Master the SQL capabilities within Microsoft Fabric by creating and managing a data warehouse. Learn how to define tables, insert data, update, delete, and represent a data model with relationships between tables. This module emphasizes querying the data warehouse, creating views, performing visual queries without writing SQL code, and visualizing data through comprehensive reports.

Who Should Attend

This training day is ideal for data engineers, data scientists, business intelligence professionals, and anyone interested in developing their data management and analysis skills using Microsoft Fabric. Whether you want to enhance your organization's data infrastructure or advance your personal skill set, this session offers valuable insights and hands-on experience in the latest Microsoft Fabric technologies.

Takeaways

Attendees will leave with a solid understanding of leveraging Microsoft Fabric to create efficient, scalable, and integrated data management solutions. With practical skills in building a Lakehouse, utilizing delta tables, creating a medallion architecture, and analysing data in a warehouse, participants will be well-equipped to drive their organizations towards a more data-driven future.

About the speaker

Gethyn is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, SQL Server consultant and trainer specialising in the Microsoft Data Platform.

Gethyn runs a small consultancy practice in the UK with clients across Europe and North America.

The consultancy practice specialises in SQL Server upgrades, migrations to Azure, database security, architecture of highly available data platforms and database performance.

Gethyn has published two books relating to SQL Server, one on SQL Server 2014 new features, and another on the Azure IaaS offering.

He is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer for a number of years and has delivered approximately 200 training courses.