Cloud & Automation
Designing a Report Engine for UI and API Consumers
Design one governed report backend for interactive UI pages, external APIs, downloads and large asynchronous exports.
Articles
Practical write-ups on data engineering, the Microsoft Data Platform, AI and cloud architecture.
Cloud & Automation
Pre-Rendered Reports vs Live Queries
Choose pre-rendered, live, or hybrid report execution using freshness, repetition, variability, cost and security constraints.
Cloud & Automation
Report Engine Architecture: Request to Result
Trace a report request through gateway, security, validation, cache, Fabric query, result construction and monitoring.
Cloud & Automation
What Is a Report Engine?
Define the report engine as a secure service between UI or API consumers and analytical data.
Microsoft Fabric
How to Make Microsoft Fabric Notebooks Faster
A practical workflow for reducing Fabric notebook startup, read, shuffle, transformation and Delta write time without guessing.
Microsoft Fabric
How to Reduce Fabric Notebook Startup Time
Diagnose Microsoft Fabric Spark session acquisition and reduce avoidable notebook startup overhead through compatible pools, environments and reuse.
Microsoft Fabric
Using Session Tags in Fabric Pipelines
Use Microsoft Fabric pipeline session tags to group compatible notebook activities for Spark session reuse while preserving workload boundaries.
DevOps & Observability
Designing an Execution Log for Data Pipelines
Design a durable pipeline execution log with run identity, parent-child relationships, transitions, retries and correlation.
DevOps & Observability
Measuring API and Report Request Volume
Measure API and report demand by client, tenant, report type, latency, concurrency, payload and request cost.
DevOps & Observability
Monitoring a Data Platform: What Should You Actually Measure?
A practical monitoring model connecting clients, applications, APIs, report engines, data platforms, compute and storage.
DevOps & Observability
Monitoring Microsoft Fabric Pipelines and Notebooks
Separate Fabric orchestration, session startup, Spark compute, data read, shuffle and write time with connected telemetry.
DevOps & Observability
Monitoring SQL Server Workloads in Real Time
Inspect active SQL Server requests, sessions and connections, then connect current state to retained Query Store history.
Python
Filtering Rows in pandas
Build readable, null-safe pandas filters for realistic order questions and validate the result instead of relying on fragile expressions.
Python
GroupBy and Aggregations
Build trustworthy pandas summaries by defining grain, revenue rules, null behavior and joins before grouping real order data.
Python
Inspecting a DataFrame
Profile a pandas DataFrame systematically with shape, schema, samples, null counts, uniqueness and distribution checks before transforming it.
Python
Joining and Merging DataFrames
Join pandas DataFrames safely with explicit cardinality, unmatched-key checks, indicators and row-count reconciliation.
Python
Reading CSV Files with pandas
Load a real CSV into pandas deliberately, validate its shape and types, and avoid the ingestion assumptions that cause downstream data problems.
SQL Server
How to Find Blocking in SQL Server
Find blocked requests, trace blocking chains to the head blocker, and inspect the responsible session and transaction safely.
SQL Server
How to Find What Is Running in SQL Server Right Now
A production-safe DMV query for active SQL Server requests, including statement text, identity, resource use, waits and blocking.
SQL Server
How to Get a SQL Server Session ID and See What It Is Doing
Find your SQL Server session ID, investigate another session, and inspect its request, SQL text, waits, blocking and open transaction state.
SQL Server
SQL Server Is Slow: A Practical Troubleshooting Workflow
A production-first workflow for turning a vague SQL Server slowdown into evidence, a likely cause, and a safe next step.
SQL Server
How to See SQL Server Table Sizes
Measure SQL Server row counts, reserved space, data, indexes and unused allocation without double-counting partitions or allocation units.
AI & Data
Using LLMs with Your Data: Practical Patterns
Engineering patterns for connecting LLM applications to enterprise data with controlled retrieval, tools and authorization.
Microsoft Fabric
Designing a Scalable Microsoft Fabric Architecture
A practical guide to workload boundaries, storage, capacity, deployment and operations in Microsoft Fabric.
Microsoft Fabric
Medallion Architecture Explained: Bronze, Silver and Gold
What the Bronze, Silver and Gold layers are for, how data quality and incremental processing work across them in Microsoft Fabric, and when fewer layers are the better design.
SQL Server
SQL Server Performance Tuning: A Practical Checklist
A production-oriented checklist for investigating SQL Server performance with evidence instead of guesses.