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Passionately curious about Data, Databases and Systems Complexity. Data is ubiquitous, the database universe is dichotomous (structured and unstructured), expanding and complex. Find my Database Research at SQLToolkit.co.uk . Microsoft Data Platform MVP

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing" Einstein



Thursday, 25 April 2024

The Age of Data Governance

Microsoft Purview is rapidly changing in the data governance space.  It is offering Data value creation with essential defense & response offense . This new addition helps business address the issues that the AI outputs are only as good as the quality of the data that resides behind it.

Peter Aiken new definition of data governance ' Managing data decisions with guidance’.  


Suma Manohar has written a great article talking about data quality in the era of AI.  Microsoft purview introduced domain and data products adding that clear business context and terminology mapping.  Enhanced search capability to provide more understanding using Copilot is available. It also can help with suggesting Data Quality rules.  These autogenerated rules are context specific.

Creating data quality rules manually in Purview should follow the 6 standard data quality metrics.

  • Freshness – confirms that all values are up to date.
  • Duplicate rows- checks rows to find repeated values across two or more columns.
  • Empty/blank files – looks for blank and empty fields in a column where there should be values.
  • Unique values – confirms that values in a column are unique.
  • Data type match – confirms that values in a column match data type requirements.
  • String format match – confirms that text values in a column match a specific format or other requirements.
  • Table lookup – confirms that a value in one table can be found in a specific column of another table
  • Custom – create a custom rule with the visual expression builder.
  • Regular expressions can be used for pattern matching in the above.

When working on data quality there are standard guidelines that can help. A method I use is firstly from the DAMA-DMBOK and then the Data Management Capability Assessment Model (DCAM)

Scans take place to show quality score and  trends in the data quality dashboard and scores are shown on the data product page

The rollout of the new solution across the regions is shared here.

Tuesday, 9 April 2024

Fabric Mirroring Overview

There was a new feature announced last year that has been developing called Mirroring in Fabric which became Public Preview in March 2024.  This enables bringing your databases into Fabric.


Fabric mirroring is a feature within Microsoft Fabric that allows for seamless and real-time data replication from various databases into a centralized analytics platform known as OneLake. This process is designed to be frictionless, eliminating the need for complex Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) pipelines, which are traditionally used to move and transform data from one system to another.

The primary advantage of fabric mirroring is its ability to provide near real-time insights by continuously updating the data in OneLake as changes occur in the source databases. This uses Change Data Capture (CDC) technology, to capture and replicate data changes to OneLake to ensure the data is always current and synchronized.

By mirroring data into OneLake, organizations can break down data silos and unify their data estate, allowing for more efficient data governance and analysis. The data which has been mirrored can be used for analytics with ease to perform various analytical tasks.

Fabric mirroring simplifies the data access process by allowing databases to be securely accessed and managed within Fabric without the need to switch database clients or install additional software. It is possible for a mirrored database to be cross joined with other databases, warehouses or lakehouses whether that be data in Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL DB, Snowflake, etc.   

In summary, fabric mirroring is a transformative feature that streamlines data replication and analysis, providing businesses with a modern, fast, and safe way to access and ingest data, thereby accelerating the journey to valuable insights and informed decision-making.

Further Reading

https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-public-preview-of-database-mirroring-in-microsoft-fabric/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/database/mirrored-database/overview

https://aka.ms/FabricRoadmap

https://aka.ms/MirrorSQLDBPublicPreviewBlog

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cosmosdb/public-preview-mirroring-azure-cosmos-db-in-microsoft-fabric

Unify your data across domains, clouds, and engines in OneLake

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Microsoft Purview Fabric announcements

There were a number of announcements at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference including the new Microsoft Purview for modern data governance was shared.  With business moving towards federated governance models, managed by line of business to help with more local understanding and increasing volumes of data, Microsoft have launched in Purview the capability for organizations to create subdomains to refine the way the data estate is structured in Fabric. Security has also become easier with the ability to set security groups for default domains. 

Microsoft Fabric is now natively integrated with Microsoft Purview Data Governance solution. There is a reimagined data governance experience for the data estate governance practice. The new experience includes data curation, an important new feature including data quality with insights. The new experience is available in preview 8 April 2024. This new experience is aiming to help accelerate measurable business value with key results, simplification and to help with implementing efficiency with natural language recommendations. 

Purview enables business terminology linkage to 

  • Data Products (a collection of data assets used for a business function) 
  • Business Domains (ownership of Data Products) 
  • Data Quality (assessment of quality) 
  • Data Access, Actions 
  • Data Estate Health (reports and insights)

A really exciting new feature we have all been waiting for is the data quality capabilities.  The is now the Data Quality model to set rules top down with business domains, data products, and the data assets. The model generates data quality scores at the asset, data product, or business domain level from the policies on terms or rules.  The score rules show on the dashboard as red/yellow/green indicator scores. The 2 capabilities in this data quality model are:

  • Profiling—quick sample set insights 
  • Data quality scans—in-depth scans of full data sets

It is great to see the Microsoft Purview continues to align to the EDM Council set of 14 rules. 

There is now an actions centre showing the current health summarising actions by role, data product or business domain for governance. This actions centra aims to help improve governance posture for the business. 

There is partnership with Ernst & Young LLP who will share playbooks and reports for US financial services customers on Azure Marketplace, throughout the preview. 


In summary there is a shift away from traditional IT-centric data architecture to federated architectures such as data mesh. The automated way to deal with Data Quality is a game changer for business. 

References

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

Easily implement data mesh architecture with domains in Fabric

Introducing modern data governance for the era of AI 

The foundation for responsible analytics with Microsoft Purview

Watch: The Unified Data Platform for the Era Of AI | Microsoft Fabric Community Conference Day 1 Keynote

Crash Course in Microsoft Purview (azureedge.net)

Learning

Monday, 1 April 2024

Responsible AI dashboard training

There is a new MSLearn course to Learn how to debug an AI model using the Responsible AI dashboard in Azure Machine Learning studio to ensure it performs responsibly and is less harmful. It is important to understand and learn how to use the dashboard to set any projects up for success.

Train a model and debug it with Responsible AI dashboard

The objectives are 

  • Create a responsible AI dashboard.
  • Identify where the model has errors.
  • Discover data over or under representation to mitigate biases.
  • Understand what drives a model outcome with explainable and interpretability.
  • Mitigate issues to meet compliance regulation requirements.

You do need the ability to understand beginner level Python.





Saturday, 30 March 2024

Data Governance AI reimagination

I have been reading a number of interesting articles of late about the demise of data governance.  I think that we are on the bridge of transformative change. I believe that tools are automating away a lot of the tasks. Data Governance is the blueprint to how we manage data establishing all the core policies, frameworks and standards on how data is to be managed. It is setting and establishing the strategies for moving forward to enable data management to process well.  

Most business data exilities in many department and teams within the business. Many businesses now have decentralised governance with only some centralised control. The teams within the business understand the data and  data control needs to be with these teams. It is useful to have central oversight but I don't see people moving to fully centralised systems. 

Peter Aiken's new definition of data governance ' Managing data decisions with guidance' is an interesting change in previously defined definitions of data governance. Perhaps moving away from an independent function to one that is just always fully incorporated. 

On the other side i see AI governance in the responsible AI side is a subset or just an addition that needs to managed. I see the main areas of governance are changing focus with AI round the corner for many organisations. I think it will just become a task that is included in everything we do rather than a specialist separate function. 

Knowing where your data is in a catalogue, how it is used and the data quality is testament to the embed nature of the new world of data governance.  There is the core importance of Data quality not just from the technical side but that is is a strategic imperative. As we all know poor quality data can damage a business reputation , have legal implications, create operational inefficiencies' and provide incorrect business insights.

All drawn together:

Reading

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reimagining-data-governance-age-ai-chad-barendse-cw3qc

The Fabric Conference 2024

The first Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, took place from 26 to 28 March 2024, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It was an in person only conference and no sessions were recorded or streamed.  Great to see so many back to in person conferences, although for those not able to attend it means limited learning. 



The conference had more than 130 sessions covering various aspects of Microsoft Fabric from data warehousing to data movement, AI, real-time analytics, and business intelligence.

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform incorporates Microsoft Fabric, a suite of technologies that empowers organizations to harness the full power of their data. By natively integrating products across four critical workloads AI, analytics, database, and security, organizations can innovate without limits. The great advantage of fabric is that it brings together disconnected services from multiple vendors to  focus on accelerating transformation.

The four core promises of Fabric:

  • Fabric is a complete platform
  • Fabric is lake-centric and open
  • Fabric can empower every business user
  • Fabric is AI powered

There was a huge number of announcements that represent just the start of the innovation to Microsoft Fabric platform.  The full set of announcements are here. I will share separately about all the Purview announcements as these will add the depth we need to drive forward with AI. A number of other features I will blog about separately as they change how Fabric is growing. 
Mirroring in Fabric is a great addition to help with the data warehouse journey to Fabric.  
Announcing the Public Preview of Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric

Create folders and sub folders in workspaces and being able to tag Fabric items in futures will be a huge plus for compliance.
Announcing Folder in Workspace in Public Preview

Microsoft Fabric has a release plan that is documented.

Next events to look out for

Microsoft Build from 21-23 May 2024 is either in person in Seattle, Washington, or online. 

PASS Summit Community Conference  4-8 November 2024

Excited that there will be a second Fabric Conference next year 1-3 April 2025 at MGM grand, Las Vegas https://aka.ms/FabCon25

Wednesday, 27 March 2024

Responsible AI Day at Microsoft

Today I took the opportunity to attend a Microsoft UK  Partner Responsible AI day at TVP in Reading. Thank you to Robin Lester and the RAI team for putting on an informative day of sessions.  I also got the opportunity to speak to Claire Dugan, a Responsible AI Advocate at Microsoft UK to discuss Governance and AI.

There are several places to get started with learning about the tools that are available to create impact assessments for projects.

FOUNDATION GUIDES 
It is necessary to adopt principles to create safe and explainable systems to ensure fair, transparent and safe systems are designed and deployed.  More details can be found