And on the very first day, we were treated to a whole series of innovations. As Powerdobs and, of course, as part of SUPERP, we follow these developments with great enthusiasm, because they offer plenty of opportunities to enable our customers to work smarter, faster, and more powerfully with data.
Power BI: more possibilities, more convenience
Several GA (General Availability) features were announced for Power BI that make an immediate difference:
- Editing Semantic Models in the Service – edit models directly in the service.
- TMDL View & Live Editing – direct editing of DL semantic models in PBID.
- Best Practices & Memory Analyzer in Notebooks – improved performance and memory management.
In addition, there were some interesting preview features:
- DAX User Defined Functions – reuse business logic within or even across models.
- Enhanced DAX Time Intelligence – work more flexibly with custom calendars.
- Performance Analyzer in the Web – faster insight into performance.
- New tenant setting for alert buttons – more specific management.
Personally, I am most enthusiastic about DAX User Defined Functions. They allow you to make analyses much more consistent and powerful.
Fabric: faster, smarter, and more accessible
Fabric also received a significant boost with new GA features such as:
- Variable Library – now also available in Dataflow Gen2 and Copy Job.
- User Data Functions & Notebook integration – greater flexibility.
- Govern Tab in OneLake Catalog – better data management.
- Azure Databricks Jobs Activity – improved integration.
In addition, a number of promising previews:
- MERGE in Warehouse – stronger data integration.
- UPSERT to Delta Table via Lakehouse Connector – easier updating.
- Fabric CLI open source – more accessible and more collaboration.
And good news for Dataflows Gen2, which has long been a problem child. With Modern Evaluator, Partitioned Compute, and a 2-tier pricing model, among other things, performance and costs have been significantly improved. This could well be a game changer!
Conclusion
The first day of FabCon Vienna was full of inspiration and concrete improvements. Whether you mainly work with Power BI or want to get more out of Fabric, there are plenty of new features to discover and utilize.
We look forward to taking the next steps together with our customers. Which feature appeals to you the most?
