A Technical Implementation Guide for Multi-Store Retail Environments
Understanding the Problem Space When organizations first approach multi-source data ingestion, they typically start with explicit configuration. Each database connection is defined individually, each table mapping is specified, and each destination partition is created manually. This works reasonably well for five or ten sources. It becomes painful at twenty. It becomes nearly unmanageable at fifty or more. The operational cost manifests in several ways. Every new store requires a ticket to the data engineering team. Someone must configure the connection, verify the schema compatibility, set up the ingestion pipeline, create the destination structures, and validate the data flow. In a fast-growing retail operation, this creates a bottleneck that delays time-to-insight for new locations. Beyond the immediate operational burden, there is also the risk of configuration drift. When each source is configured individually, small inconsistencies creep in over time. One store might have slightly different table names. Another might be ingesting an extra column that was added during a schema migration. These inconsistencies compound, making the overall system harder to maintain and debug. The solution presented here eliminates most of this manual work by implementing two complementary patterns: automatic source detection through regex-based CDC configuration, and dynamic partition creation through Delta Lake's native capabilities. Architecture Overview The proposed architecture places Debezium as the CDC engine, reading from PostgreSQL databases and publishing change events to Azure Event Hubs. Fabric EventStream consumes these events and writes them to a Delta Lake table in the Lakehouse. The key insight is that neither Debezium nor Delta Lake requires explicit enumeration of every data source. Both can operate on patterns rather than explicit lists. At the source layer, Debezium connects to PostgreSQL and monitors the write-ahead log for changes. Rather than configuring a separate connector for each store database, a single connector is configured with a regex pattern that matches all store databases. When a new database is created that matches this pattern, Debezium automatically begins capturing its changes without any configuration update. At the destination layer, Delta Lake tables are defined with partition columns but without explicit partition values. When a record arrives with a previously unseen partition value, Delta Lake automatically creates the necessary directory structure and begins writing data to the new partition. No DDL statement is required, no manual intervention is needed. The combination of these two behaviors creates an end-to-end pipeline where adding a new store database is as simple as creating the database itself. Everything downstream happens automatically. Implementation Details Configuring Debezium for Automatic Source Detection The critical configuration element in Debezium is the database include list parameter. Rather than specifying each database explicitly, this parameter accepts a regular expression that defines which databases should be monitored. For a retail environment where store databases follow a naming convention such as store_001, store_002, and so forth, the configuration would specify a pattern like store_.* as the include list. This pattern matches any database whose name begins with store_ followed by any characters. When the DBA creates store_058, Debezium detects this new database during its periodic metadata refresh and automatically begins capturing changes from it. The connector configuration should also specify which tables within each database to monitor. In most retail scenarios, the schema is standardized across all stores, so this can be a fixed list such as public.transactions, public.inventory, and public.products. If schema variations exist between stores, additional filtering logic may be required, but this is generally a sign that the source systems need standardization rather than accommodation of inconsistency. The topic routing configuration is equally important. All CDC events should be routed to a single Event Hubs topic, with the store identifier included in the message payload. This allows a single EventStream to process all store data while preserving the ability to identify which store each record originated from. The source metadata that Debezium includes with each change event contains the database name, which serves as the natural store identifier. Initial snapshot behavior must be considered carefully. When Debezium detects a new database, it will perform an initial snapshot to capture the current state before beginning to track incremental changes. For a store with substantial historical data, this snapshot may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. During this period, the connector is occupied with the snapshot and may exhibit increased latency for change events from other databases. Scheduling new store database creation during off-peak hours helps mitigate this impact. Configuring Delta Lake for Dynamic Partitioning Delta Lake supports dynamic partition creation as a default behavior. When a table is created with partition columns specified, any INSERT operation that includes a previously unseen partition value will automatically create the corresponding partition directory. The table definition should include the store identifier as the primary partition column. A secondary partition on date is typically advisable for managing data lifecycle and optimizing query performance. The combination of store_id and event_date provides a natural organization that supports both store-specific queries and time-range queries efficiently. The table should be created with automatic optimization enabled. The autoOptimize.optimizeWrite property causes Delta Lake to automatically coalesce small files during write operations, reducing the small file problem that frequently plagues streaming ingestion workloads. The autoOptimize.autoCompact property enables background compaction of files that have accumulated between optimization runs. When EventStream writes a record with store_id equal to store_058 and this value has never been seen before, Delta Lake creates the partition directory structure automatically. The first write creates the directory, and subsequent writes append to files within that directory. From the perspective of downstream queries, the new store's data is immediately available without any schema changes or administrative intervention. EventStream Processing Logic The EventStream configuration bridges the gap between Event Hubs and the Lakehouse. It must parse the Debezium change event format, extract the relevant fields including the store identifier, and route the data to the appropriate Delta table. The transformation logic should extract the store identifier from the source metadata section of the Debezium payload. This is typically found at a path like source.db within the JSON structure. The operation type indicating whether the change is an insert, update, or delete should be preserved for downstream CDC merge processing. A derived column for the event date should be computed from the event timestamp. This serves as the secondary partition key and enables time-based data management. The date extraction should use the source system timestamp rather than the ingestion timestamp to ensure that data is partitioned based on when the business event occurred rather than when it was processed. The destination configuration specifies the Delta table and the partition columns. EventStream handles the actual write operations, and Delta Lake handles the partition management automatically based on the values present in each record. Best Practices for Production Deployment Naming Convention Enforcement The automatic detection pattern is only as reliable as the naming convention it depends on. Before implementing this architecture, establish and enforce a strict naming convention for store databases. Document the convention, communicate it to all teams that provision databases, and implement validation checks in the database provisioning process. The naming convention should be simple and unambiguous. A pattern like store_NNN where NNN is a zero-padded three-digit number provides clear structure and allows for up to 999 stores without format changes. Avoid conventions that might conflict with other databases or that include characters with special meaning in regex patterns. Schema Standardization Automatic source detection assumes that all detected sources share a compatible schema. If store_058 has different table structures than store_001, the downstream processing will fail or produce incorrect results. Schema standardization must be enforced at the source system level before relying on automatic detection. Implement schema validation as part of the store database provisioning process. When a new store database is created, it should be created from a template that guarantees schema compatibility. If schema migrations are necessary, they should be applied uniformly across all store databases before being reflected in the CDC configuration. Partition Key Selection The choice of partition keys has significant implications for both storage efficiency and query performance. The store identifier is the natural first-level partition because it provides the strongest cardinality and aligns with common query patterns such as analyzing a specific store's performance. Date as a secondary partition enables efficient time-range queries and simplifies data lifecycle management. Retention policies can be implemented by dropping old date partitions rather than scanning and deleting individual records. However, the combination of store and date partitions can produce a large number of partition directories. With 100 stores and 365 days of retained data, the table would have 36,500 partitions. While Delta Lake handles this reasonably well, query planning overhead increases with partition count. Consider using month rather than date as the secondary partition if the total partition count becomes problematic. This reduces the partition count by a factor of roughly 30 while still enabling reasonably efficient time-based queries and lifecycle management. Monitoring and Alerting Automatic detection reduces operational burden but does not eliminate the need for monitoring. Implement alerting for several key scenarios. First, monitor for new store detection. While the system handles new stores automatically, operations teams should be notified when a new store begins ingesting data. This serves as a sanity check that the detection is working and provides visibility into the growth of the system. Second, monitor for schema compatibility failures. If a new database is detected but its schema does not match expectations, the CDC process may fail or produce malformed data. Alerting on processing errors helps catch these issues quickly. Third, monitor for snapshot completion. When a new store database triggers an initial snapshot, track the snapshot progress and completion. Extended snapshot times may indicate unusually large source tables or performance issues that warrant investigation. Fourth, monitor partition growth. While dynamic partitioning is convenient, runaway partition creation can indicate a problem such as incorrect store identifiers being generated. Alert if the number of distinct store partitions grows faster than expected based on the known rate of new store openings. Initial Snapshot Planning The initial snapshot that occurs when a new database is detected can be resource-intensive for both the source database and the CDC infrastructure. Plan for this by establishing a new store onboarding window during off-peak hours when the impact of snapshot processing is minimized. Consider implementing a two-phase onboarding process for stores with large historical datasets. In the first phase, configure the database but exclude it from the Debezium include pattern. Perform a bulk historical load using batch processing, which can be throttled and scheduled more flexibly than the streaming snapshot. In the second phase, add the database to the include pattern to begin capturing incremental changes. This approach reduces the load on the streaming infrastructure while still achieving complete data capture. Capacity Planning Dynamic detection and partitioning enable easy scaling in terms of configuration, but the underlying infrastructure must still be sized appropriately. Event Hubs throughput units must accommodate the aggregate event volume from all stores. Fabric capacity units must handle the combined processing load of EventStream and Delta Lake operations. Develop a capacity model that estimates resource requirements per store. Multiply by the current store count plus a growth buffer to determine infrastructure sizing. Review and adjust this model as actual usage patterns become clear. Risk Assessment and Mitigation Uncontrolled Source Proliferation The convenience of automatic detection carries a risk of unintended sources being captured. If the naming convention is not strictly enforced, or if the regex pattern is too broad, databases that should not be ingested may be detected and processed. Mitigation involves implementing strict naming convention governance and using precise regex patterns. The pattern should be as specific as possible while still accommodating legitimate variations. Consider implementing a whitelist in addition to the pattern match, where new databases matching the pattern are flagged for approval before ingestion begins. This adds a manual step but provides a safety checkpoint. Schema Drift Between Sources Over time, individual store databases may drift from the standard schema due to local modifications, failed migrations, or version inconsistencies. When the CDC process encounters unexpected schema elements, it may fail or produce incorrect data. Mitigation requires implementing schema validation at both the source and destination. At the source, periodic schema audits should compare each store database against the canonical schema and flag deviations. At the destination, schema evolution policies in Delta Lake should be configured to reject incompatible changes rather than silently accepting them. The merge schema option should be used cautiously and only when schema evolution is intentional. Partition Explosion Dynamic partition creation can lead to an excessive number of partitions if the partition key has unexpectedly high cardinality or if erroneous data introduces spurious partition values. A misconfigured pipeline might create thousands of partitions, degrading query performance and complicating data management. Mitigation involves implementing partition count monitoring with alerts at defined thresholds. Additionally, validate partition key values before writing to Delta Lake. If a store identifier does not match the expected format, reject the record or route it to an error table for investigation rather than creating an erroneous partition. CDC Lag During Snapshot When a new database triggers an initial snapshot, the Debezium connector dedicates resources to reading the full table contents. During this period, change events from other databases may experience increased latency. In severe cases, the replication slot lag may grow to problematic levels. Mitigation involves scheduling new database provisioning during low-activity periods, sizing the CDC infrastructure with headroom for snapshot operations, and monitoring replication slot lag with alerts at defined thresholds. For very large initial loads, consider the two-phase onboarding approach described earlier. Event Hubs Partition Affinity Event Hubs uses partitions to parallelize message processing. If all messages are routed to a single partition, throughput is limited to what that partition can handle. If messages are distributed across partitions without regard to ordering requirements, related events may be processed out of order. Mitigation involves configuring the Debezium producer to use the store identifier as the partition key. This ensures that all events for a given store are routed to the same Event Hubs partition, preserving ordering within each store while distributing load across partitions for different stores. The number of Event Hubs partitions should be set high enough to accommodate the expected number of stores with room for growth. Unlike some properties, partition count cannot be increased after the Event Hub is created. Orphaned Replication Slots If a store database is decommissioned but the replication slot is not cleaned up, PostgreSQL continues to retain write-ahead log segments for the orphaned slot. Over time, this can fill the disk and cause database outages. Mitigation requires implementing a decommissioning procedure that includes replication slot cleanup. Monitor for inactive replication slots and alert when a slot has not been read from in an extended period. Consider implementing automatic slot cleanup for slots that have been inactive beyond a defined threshold, though this should be done cautiously to avoid accidentally removing slots that are temporarily inactive due to maintenance. Operational Procedures Adding a New Store The procedure for adding a new store is intentionally minimal. The DBA creates the store database following the established naming convention. The database should be created from the standard template to ensure schema compatibility. Within minutes of database creation, Debezium detects the new database and begins the initial snapshot. Operations teams receive a notification of the new store detection. The snapshot progresses, with completion typically occurring within 30 minutes for a standard store data volume. Once the snapshot completes, incremental CDC begins. The first records arriving at the Lakehouse trigger automatic partition creation. From this point forward, the new store's data is fully integrated into the analytics platform with no additional intervention required. Removing a Store Store removal requires more deliberate action than store addition. First, stop ingesting new data by either renaming the database to no longer match the include pattern or by dropping the database entirely. Second, drop the replication slot associated with the store to prevent WAL retention issues. Third, decide whether to retain or purge historical data in the Lakehouse. If historical data should be retained, no action is needed at the Lakehouse level. The partition remains but simply receives no new data. If historical data should be purged, drop the partition using Delta Lake's partition drop capability. This removes the data files and the partition metadata in a single atomic operation. Handling Schema Changes Schema changes require coordination across all store databases and the downstream processing logic. Minor additive changes such as new nullable columns can often be handled through Delta Lake's schema evolution capabilities. The merge schema option allows new columns to be added automatically when encountered. Breaking changes such as column renames, type changes, or column removals require a more deliberate migration process. First, update the downstream processing logic to handle both the old and new schemas. Deploy this change and verify it works with existing data. Then, apply the schema change to source databases in a rolling fashion. Finally, once all sources have been migrated, remove support for the old schema from the processing logic. Disaster Recovery The architecture provides several recovery options depending on the failure scenario. If Event Hubs experiences an outage, Debezium buffers changes locally and resumes publishing when connectivity is restored. The replication slot ensures no changes are lost during the outage, though extended outages may cause WAL accumulation on the source database. If Fabric experiences an outage, events accumulate in Event Hubs up to the retention period. Once Fabric recovers, EventStream resumes processing from its last checkpoint, catching up on accumulated events. The Delta Lake table remains consistent due to its transactional nature. If a source database is lost, recovery depends on backup strategy. The Lakehouse contains a copy of all ingested data, which can serve as a read-only recovery source. Full database recovery requires restoring from PostgreSQL backups. Dynamic partitioning and automatic source detection transform multi-store data ingestion from an operational burden into a largely self-managing system. The combination of Debezium's pattern-based database detection with Delta Lake's dynamic partition creation eliminates most manual configuration work while maintaining the flexibility to accommodate growth. The implementation requires careful attention to naming conventions, schema standardization, and monitoring. The risks are real but manageable with appropriate governance and operational procedures. For organizations operating at scale with dozens or hundreds of similar data sources, this architecture provides a sustainable path to unified analytics without proportional growth in operational overhead. The key principle underlying this approach is that systems should adapt to data rather than requiring data to conform to rigid system configurations. By designing for automatic detection and dynamic accommodation, the data platform becomes a utility that business operations can leverage without constant engineering involvement. This shift from explicit configuration to pattern-based adaptation is essential for organizations seeking to derive value from data at scale.Azure Databricks Cost Optimization: A Practical Guide
Co-Authored by: Sanjeev Nair Sanjeev Nair and Rafia Aqil Rafia_Aqil This guide walks through a proven approach to Databricks cost optimization, structured in three phases: Discovery, Cluster/Data/Code Best Practices, and Team Alignment & Next Steps. Phase 1: Discovery Assessing Your Current State The following questions are designed to guide your initial assessment and help you identify areas for improvement. Documenting answers to each will provide a baseline for optimization and inform the next phases of your cost management strategy. Environment & Organization Cluster Management Cost Optimization Data Management Performance Monitoring Future Planning What is the current scale of your Databricks environment? How many workspaces do you have? How are your workspaces organized (e.g., by environment type, region, use case)? How many clusters are deployed? How many users are active? What are the primary use cases for Databricks in your organization? Data engineering Data science Machine learning Business intelligence How are clusters currently managed? Manual configuration Automated scripts Databricks REST API Cluster policies What is the average cluster uptime? Hours per day Days per week What is the average cluster utilization rate? CPU usage Memory usage What is the current monthly spend on Databricks? Total cost Breakdown by workspace Breakdown by cluster What cost management tools are currently in use? Azure Cost Management Third-party tools Are there any existing cost optimization strategies in place? Reserved instances Spot instances Cluster auto-scaling What is the current data storage strategy? Data lake Data warehouse Hybrid What is the average data ingestion rate? GB per day Number of files What is the average data processing time? ETL jobs Machine learning models What types of data formats are used in your environment? Delta Lake Parquet JSON CSV Other formats relevant to your workloads What performance monitoring tools are currently in use? Databricks Ganglia Azure Monitor Third-party tools What are the key performance metrics tracked? Job execution time Cluster performance Data processing speed Are there any planned expansions or changes to the Databricks environment? New use cases Increased data volume Additional users What are the long-term goals for Databricks cost optimization? Reducing overall spend Improving resource utilization & cost attribution Enhancing performance Understanding Databricks Cost Structure Total Cost = Cloud Cost + DBU Cost Cloud Cost: Compute (VMs, networking, IP addresses), storage (ADLS, MLflow artifacts), other services (firewalls), cluster type (serverless compute, classic compute) DBU Cost: Workload size, cluster/warehouse size, photon acceleration, compute runtime, workspace tier, SKU type (Jobs, Delta Live Tables, All Purpose Clusters, Serverless), model serving, queries per second, model execution time Diagnose Cost and Issues Effectively diagnosing cost and performance issues in Databricks requires a structured approach. Use the following steps and metrics to gain visibility into your environment and uncover actionable insights. 1. Identify Costly Workloads Account Console Usage Reports: Review usage reports to identify usage breakdowns by product, SKU name, and custom tags. Usage Breakdown by Product and SKU: Helps you understand which services and compute types (clusters, SQL warehouses, serverless options) are consuming the most resources. Custom Tags for Attribution: Tags allow you to attribute costs to teams, projects, or departments, making it easier to identify high-cost areas. Workflow and Job Analysis: By correlating usage data with workflows and jobs, you can pinpoint long-running or resource-heavy workloads that drive costs. Focus on Long-Running Workloads: Examine workloads with extended runtimes or high resource utilization. Key Question: Which pipelines or workloads are driving the majority of your costs? Now That You’ve Identified Long-Running Workloads, Review These Key Areas: 2. Review Cluster Metrics CPU Utilization: Track guest, iowait, idle, irq, nice, softirq, steal, system, and user times to understand how compute resources are being used. Memory Utilization: Monitor used, free, buffer, and cached memory to identify over- or under-utilization. Key Question: Is your cluster over- or under-utilized? Are resources being wasted or stretched too thin? 3. Review SQL Warehouse Metrics Live Statistics: Monitor warehouse status, running/queued queries, and current cluster count. Time Scale Filter: Analyze query and cluster activity over different time frames (8 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, 14 days). Peak Query Count Chart: Identify periods of high concurrency. Completed Query Count Chart: Track throughput and query success/failure rates. Running Clusters Chart: Observe cluster allocation and recycling events. Query History Table: Filter and analyze queries by user, duration, status, and statement type. Key Question: Is your SQL Warehouse over- or under-utilized? Are resources being wasted or stretched too thin? 4. Review Spark UI Stages Tab: Look for skewed data, high input/output, and shuffle times. Uneven task durations may indicate data skew or inefficient data handling. Jobs Timeline: Identify long-running jobs or stages that consume excessive resources. Stage Analysis: Determine if stages are I/O bound or suffering from data skew/spill. Executor Metrics: Monitor memory usage, CPU utilization, and disk I/O. Frequent garbage collection or high memory usage may signal the need for better resource allocation. 4.1. Spark UI: Storage & Jobs Tab Storage Level: Check if data is stored in memory, on disk, or both. Size: Assess the size of cached data. Job Analysis: Investigate jobs that dominate the timeline or have unusually long durations. Look for gaps caused by complex execution plans, non-Spark code, driver overload, or cluster malfunction. 4.2. Spark UI: Executor Tab Storage Memory: Compare used vs. available memory. Task Time (Garbage Collection): Review long tasks and garbage collection times. Shuffle Read/Write: Measure data transferred between stages. 5. Additional Diagnostic Methods System Tables in Unity Catalog: Query system tables for cost attribution and resource usage trends. Cost Observability Queries Tagging Analysis: Use tags to identify which teams or projects consume the most resources. Dashboards & Alerts: Set up cost dashboards and budget alerts for proactive monitoring. Phase 2: Cluster/Code/Data Best Practices Alignment Cluster UI Configuration and Cost Attribution Effectively configuring clusters/workloads in Databricks is essential for balancing performance, scalability, and cost. Tunning settings and features when used strategically can help organizations maximize resource efficiency and minimize unnecessary spending. Key Configuration Strategies 1. Reduce Idle Time: Clusters to incur costs even when not actively processing workloads. To avoid paying for unused resources: Enable Auto-Terminate: Set clusters automatically shut down after a period of inactivity. This simple setting can significantly reduce wasted spending. Enable Autoscaling: Workloads fluctuate in size and complexity. Autoscaling allows clusters to dynamically adjust the number of nodes based on demand: Automatic Resource Adjustment: Scale up for heavy jobs and scale down for lighter loads, ensuring you only pay for what you use. It significantly enhances cost efficiency and overall performance. For serverless and streaming, using Delta Live Tables with autoscaling is recommended. This approach leads to better resource management and reliability. Use Spot Instances: For batch processing and non-critical workloads, spot instances offer substantial cost savings: Lower VM Costs: Spot instances are typically much cheaper than standard VMs. However, they are not recommended for jobs requiring constant uptime due to potential interruptions. Considerations: Azure Spot VMs are intended for non-critical, fault-tolerant tasks. They can be evicted without notice, riskingproduction stability. No SLA guarantees mean potentialdowntime for critical applications. Using Spot VMs could lead to reliability issues in production environments. Leverage Photon Engine: Photon is Databricks’ high-performance, vectorized query engine: Accelerate Large Workloads: Photon can dramatically reduce runtime for compute-intensive tasks, improving both speed and cost efficiency. Keep Runtimes Up to Date: Using the latest Databricks runtime ensures optimal performance and security: Benefit from Improvements: Regular updates include performance enhancements, bug fixes, and new features. Apply Cluster Policies: Cluster policies help standardize configurations and enforce cost controls across teams: Governance and Consistency: Policies can restrict certain settings, enforce tagging, and ensure clusters are created with cost-effective defaults. Optimize Storage: type impacts both performance and cost: Switch from HDDs to SSDs: SSDs provide faster caching and shuffle operations, which can improve job efficiency and reduce runtime. Tag Clusters for Cost Attribution: Tagging clusters enables granular tracking and reporting: Visibility and Accountability: Use tags to attribute costs to specific teams, projects, or environments, supporting better budgeting and chargeback processes. Select the Right Cluster Type: Different workloads require different cluster types, see table below for Serverless vs Classic Compute: Feature Classic Compute Serverless Compute Control Full control over config & network Minimal control, fully managed by Databricks Startup Time Slower (unless pre-warmed) Instant Cost Model Hourly, supports reservations Pay-per-use, elastic scaling Security VNet injection, private endpoints NCC-based private connectivity Best For Heavy ETL, ML, compliance workloads Interactive queries, unpredictable demand Job Clusters: Ideal for scheduled jobs and Delta Live Tables. All-Purpose Clusters: Suited for ad-hoc analysis and collaborative work. Single-Node Clusters: Efficient for simple exploratory data analysis or pure Python tasks. Serverless Compute: Scalable, managed workloads with automatic resource management. 11. Monitor and Adjust Regularly: review cluster metrics and query history: Continuous Optimization: Use built-in dashboards to monitor usage, identify bottlenecks, and adjust cluster size or configuration as needed. Code Best Practices Avoid Reprocessing Large Tables Use a CDC (Change Data Capture) architecture with Delta Live Tables (DLT) to process only new or changed data, minimizing unnecessary computation. Ensure Code Parallelizes Well Write Spark code that leverages parallel processing. Avoid loops, deeply nested structures, and inefficient user-defined functions (UDFs) that can hinder scalability. Reduce Memory Consumption Tweak Spark configurations to minimize memory overhead. Clean out legacy or unnecessary settings that may have carried over from previous Spark versions. Prefer SQL Over Complex Python Use SQL (declarative language) for Spark jobs whenever possible. SQL queries are typically more efficient and easier to optimize than complex Python logic. Modularize Notebooks Use %run to split large notebooks into smaller, reusable modules. This improves maintainability. Use LIMIT in Exploratory Queries When exploring data, always use the LIMIT clause to avoid scanning large datasets unnecessarily. Monitor Job Performance Regularly review Spark UI to detect inefficiencies such as high shuffle, input, or output. Review the below table for optimization opportunities: Spark stage high I/O - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn Databricks Code Performance Enhancements & Data Engineering Best Practices By enabling the below features and applying best practices, you can significantly lower costs, accelerate job execution, and build Databricks pipelines that are both scalable and highly reliable. For more guidance review: Comprehensive Guide to Optimize Data Workloads | Databricks. Feature / Technique Purpose / Benefit How to Use / Enable / Key Notes Disk Caching Accelerates repeated reads of Parquet files Set spark.databricks.io.cache.enabled = true Dynamic File Pruning (DFP) Skips irrelevant data files during queries, improves query performance Enabled by default in Databricks Low Shuffle Merge Reduces data rewriting during MERGE operations, less need to recalculate ZORDER Use Databricks runtime with feature enabled Adaptive Query Execution (AQE) Dynamically optimizes query plans based on runtime statistics Available in Spark 3.0+, enabled by default Deletion Vectors Efficient row removal/change without rewriting entire Parquet file Enable in workspace settings, use with Delta Lake Materialized Views Faster BI queries, reduced compute for frequently accessed data Create in Databricks SQL Optimize Compacts Delta Lake files, improves query performance Run regularly, combine with ZORDER on high-cardinality columns ZORDER Physically sorts/co-locates data by chosen columns for faster queries Use with OPTIMIZE, select columns frequently used in filters/joins Auto Optimize Automatically compacts small files during writes Enable optimizeWrite and autoCompact table properties Liquid Clustering Simplifies data layout, replaces partitioning/ZORDER, flexible clustering keys Recommended for new Delta tables, enables easy redefinition of clustering keys File Size Tuning Achieve optimal file size for performance and cost Set delta.targetFileSize table property Broadcast Hash Join Optimizes joins by broadcasting smaller tables Adjust spark.sql.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold and spark.databricks.adaptive.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold Shuffle Hash Join Faster join alternative to sort-merge join Prefer over sort-merge join when broadcasting isn’t possible, Photon engine can help Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) Improves query plans for complex joins Enabled by default, collect column/table statistics with ANALYZE TABLE Data Spilling & Skew Handles uneven data distribution and excessive shuffle Use AQE, set spark.sql.shuffle.partitions=auto, optimize partitioning Data Explosion Management Controls partition sizes after transformations (e.g., explode, join) Adjust spark.sql.files.maxPartitionBytes, use repartition() after reads Delta Merge Efficient upserts and CDC (Change Data Capture) Use MERGE operation in Delta Lake, combine with CDC architecture Data Purging (Vacuum) Removes stale data files, maintains storage efficiency Run VACUUM regularly based on transaction frequency Phase 3: Team Alignment and Next Steps Implementing Cost Observability and Taking Action Effective cost management in Databricks goes beyond configuration and code—it requires robust observability, granular tracking, and proactive measures. Below outlines how your teams can achieve this using system tables, tagging, dashboards, and actionable scripts. Cost Observability with System Tables Databricks Unity Catalog provides system tables that store operational data for your account. These tables enable historical cost observability and empower FinOps teams to analyze spend independently. System Tables Location: Found inside the Unity Catalog under the “system” schema. Key Benefits: Structured data for querying, historical analysis, and cost attribution. Action: Assign permissions to FinOps teams so they can access and analyze dedicated cost tables. Enable Tags for Granular Tracking Tagging is a powerful feature for tracking, reporting, and budgeting at a granular level. Classic Compute: Manually add key/value pairs when creating clusters, jobs, SQL Warehouses, or Model Serving endpoints. Use cluster policies to enforce custom tags. Serverless Compute: Create budget policies and assign permissions to teams or members for serverless workloads. Action: Tag all compute resources to enable detailed cost attribution and reporting. Track Costs with Dashboards and Alerts Databricks offers prebuilt dashboards and queries for cost forecasting and usage analysis. Dashboards: Visualize spend, usage trends, and forecast future costs. Prebuilt Queries: Use top queries with system tables to answer meaningful cost questions. Budget Alerts: Set up alerts in the Account Console (Usage > Budget) to receive notifications when spend approaches defined thresholds. Build Culture of Efficiency To go beyond technical fixes and build a culture of efficiency, by focusing on the below strategic actions: Collaborate with Internal Engineers: Spend time with engineering teams to understand workload patterns and optimization opportunities. Peer Reviews and Code Audits: Conduct regular code review sessions and peer reviews to ensure best practices are followed for Spark jobs, data pipelines, and cluster configurations. Create Internal Best Practice Documentation: Develop clear guidelines for writing optimized code, managing data, and maintaining clusters. Make these resources easily accessible for all teams. Implement Observability Dashboards: Use Databricks’ built-in features to create dashboards that track spend, monitor resource utilization, and highlight anomalies. Set Alerts and Budgets: Configure alerts for long-running workloads and establish budgets using prebuilt Databricks capabilities to prevent cost overruns. 5. Azure Reservations and Azure Savings Plan When optimizing Databricks costs on Azure, it’s important to understand the two main commitment-based savings options: Azure Reservations and Azure Savings Plans. Both can help you reduce compute costs, but they differ in flexibility and how savings are applied. Which Should You Choose? Reservations are ideal if you have stable, predictable Databricks workloads and want maximum savings. Savings Plans are better if you expect your compute needs to change, or if you want a simpler, more flexible way to save across multiple services. Pro Tip: You can combine both options—use Reservations for your baseline, always-on Databricks clusters, and Savings Plans for bursty, variable, or new workloads. Summary Table: Action Steps It’s critical to monitor costs continuously and align your teams with established best practices, while scheduling regular code review sessions to ensure efficiency and consistency. Area Best Practice / Action System Tables Use for historical cost analysis and attribution Tagging Apply to all compute resources for granular tracking Dashboards Visualize spend, usage, and forecasts Alerts Set budget alerts for proactive cost management Scripts/Queries Build custom analysis tools for deep insights Cluster/Data/Code Review & Align Regularly review best practices, share findings, and align teams on optimization Save on your Usage Consider Azure Reservations and Azure Savings PlanFrom Bronze to Gold: Data Quality Strategies for ETL in Microsoft Fabric
Introduction Data fuels analytics, machine learning, and AI but only if it’s trustworthy. Most organizations struggle with inconsistent schemas, nulls, data drift, or unexpected upstream changes that silently break dashboards, models, and business logic. Microsoft Fabric provides a unified analytics platform with OneLake, pipelines, notebooks, and governance capabilities. When combined with Great Expectations, an open-source data quality framework, Fabric becomes a powerful environment for enforcing data quality at scale. In this article, we explore how to implement enterprise-ready, parameterized data validation inside Fabric notebooks using Great Expectations including row-count drift detection, schema checks, primary-key uniqueness, and time-series batch validation. A quick reminder: ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is the process of pulling raw data from source systems, applying business logic and quality validations, and delivering clean, curated datasets for analytics and AI. While ETL spans the full Medallion architecture, this guide focuses specifically on data quality checks in the Bronze layer using the NYC Taxi sample dataset. 🔗 Full implementation is available in my GitHub repository: sallydabbahmsft/Data-Quality-Checks-in-Microsoft-Fabric: Data Quality Checks in Microsoft Fabric Why Data Quality Matters More Than Ever? AI and analytics initiatives fail not because of model quality but because the underlying data is inaccurate, incomplete, or inconsistent. Organizations adopting Microsoft Fabric often ask: How can we validate data as it lands in Bronze? How do we detect schema changes before they break downstream pipelines? How do we prevent silent failures, anomalies, and drift? How do we standardize data quality checks across multiple tables and pipelines? Great Expectations provides a unified, testable, automation-friendly way to answer these questions. Great Expectations in Fabric Great Expectations (GX) is an open-source library for: ✔ Declarative data quality rules ("expectations") ✔ Automated validation during ETL ✔ Rich documentation and reporting ✔ Batch-based validation for time-series or large datasets ✔ Integration with Python, Spark, SQL, and cloud data platforms Fabric notebooks now support Great Expectations natively (via PySpark), enabling engineering teams to: Build reusable DQ suites Parameterize expectations by pipeline Validate full datasets or daily partitions Integrate validation into Fabric pipelines and alerting Data Quality Across the Medallion Architecture This solution follows the Medallion Architecture, with validation at every layer. This pipeline follows a Medallion Architecture, moving data through the Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers while enforcing data quality checks at every stage. 📘 P.S. Fabric also supports this via built-in Medallion task flows: Task flows overview - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 🥉Bronze Layer: Ingestion & Validation Ingest raw source data into Bronze without transformations. Run foundational DQ checks to ensure structural integrity. Bronze DQ answers: ➡ Did the data arrive correctly? 🥈Silver Layer: Transformation & Validation Clean, standardize, and enrich Bronze data. Validate business rules, schema consistency, reference values, and more. Silver DQ answers: ➡ Is the data accurate and logically correct? 🥇 Gold Layer: Enrichment & Consumption Produce curated, analytics-ready datasets. Validate metrics, aggregates, and business KPIs. Gold DQ answers: ➡ Can executives trust the numbers? Recommended Data Quality Validations: Bronze Layer (Raw Ingestion) Ingestion Volume & Row Drift – Validate total row count and detect unexpected volume drops or spikes. Schema & Data Type Compliance – Ensure the table structure and column data types match the expected schema. Null / Empty Column Checks – Identify missing or empty values in required fields. Primary Key Uniqueness – Detect duplicate records based on the defined composite or natural key. Silver Layer (Cleaned & Standardized Data) Reference & Domain Value Validation – Confirm that values match valid categories, lookups, or reference datasets. Business Rule Enforcement – Validate logic constraints (e.g., StartDate <= EndDate, percentages within range). Anomaly / Outlier Detection – Identify unusual patterns or values that deviate from historical behavior. Post-Standardization Deduplication – Ensure standardized and enriched records no longer contain duplicates. Gold Layer (Curated, Business-Ready Data) Metric & Aggregation Consistency – Validate totals, ratios, rollups, and other aggregated metrics. KPI Threshold Monitoring – Trigger alerts when KPIs exceed defined thresholds. Data / Feature Drift Detection (for ML) – Monitor changes in distributions across time. Cross-System Consistency Checks – Compare business metrics across internal systems to ensure alignment. Implementing Data Quality with Great Expectations in Fabric Step 1 - Read data from Lakehouse (parametrized): lakehouse_name = "Bronze" table_name = "NYC Taxi - Green" query = f"SELECT * FROM {lakehouse_name}.`{table_name}`" df = spark.sql(query) Step 2 - Create and Register a Suite: context = gx.get_context() suite = context.suites.add( gx.ExpectationSuite(name="nyc_bronze_suite") ) Step 3 - Add Bronze Layer Expectations (Reusable Function): import great_expectations as gx def add_bronze_expectations( suite: gx.ExpectationSuite, primary_key_columns: list[str], required_columns: list[str], expected_schema: list[str], expected_row_count: int | None = None, max_row_drift_pct: float = 0.2, ) -> gx.ExpectationSuite: # 1. Ingestion Count & Row Drift if expected_row_count is not None: min_rows = int(expected_row_count * (1 - max_row_drift_pct)) max_rows = int(expected_row_count * (1 + max_row_drift_pct)) row_count_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectTableRowCountToBeBetween( min_value=min_rows, max_value=max_rows, ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=row_count_expectation) # 2. Schema Compliance schema_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectTableColumnsToMatchSet( column_set=expected_schema, exact_match=True, ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=schema_expectation) # 3. Required columns: NOT NULL for col in required_columns: not_null_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectColumnValuesToNotBeNull( column=col ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=not_null_expectation) # 4. Primary key uniqueness (if provided) if primary_key_columns: unique_pk_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectCompoundColumnsToBeUnique( column_list=primary_key_columns ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=unique_pk_expectation) return suite Step 4 - Attach Data Asset & Batch Definition: data_source = context.data_sources.add_spark(name="bronze_datasource") data_asset = data_source.add_dataframe_asset(name="nyc_bronze_data") batch_definition = data_asset.add_batch_definition_whole_dataframe("full_bronze_batch") Step 5 - Run Validation: validation_definition = gx.ValidationDefinition( data=batch_definition, suite=suite, name="Bronze_DQ_Validation" ) results = validation_definition.run( batch_parameters={"dataframe": df} ) print(results) 7. Optional: Time-Series Batch Validation (Daily Slices) Fabric does not yet support add_batch_definition_timeseries, so your notebook implements custom logic to validate each day independently: dates_df = df.select(F.to_date("lpepPickupDatetime").alias("dt")).distinct() for d in dates: df_day = df.filter(F.to_date("lpepPickupDatetime") == d) results = validation_definition.run(batch_parameters={"dataframe": df_day}) This enables: Daily anomaly detection Partition-level completeness checks Early schema drift detection Automating DQ with Fabric Pipelines Fabric pipelines can orchestrate your data quality workflow: Trigger notebook after ingestion Pass parameters (table, layer, suite name) Persist DQ results to Lakehouse or Log Analytics Configure alerts in Fabric Monitor Production workflow Run the notebook Check validation results If failures exist: Raise an incident Fail the pipeline Notify the on-call engineer This creates a closed loop of ingestion → validation → monitoring → alerting. An example of DQ pipeline: Results: How Enterprises Benefit By standardizing data quality rules across all domains, organizations ensure consistent expectations and uniform validation practices , improved observability makes data quality issues visible and actionable, enabling teams to detect and resolve failures early. This, in turn, enhances overall reliability, ensuring downstream transformations and Power BI reports operate on clean, trustworthy data. Ultimately, stronger data quality directly contributes to AI readiness high-quality, well-validated data produces significantly better analytics and machine learning outcomes. Conclusion Great Expectations + Microsoft Fabric creates a scalable, modular, enterprise-ready approach for ensuring data quality across the entire medallion architecture. Whether you're validating raw ingested data, transformed datasets, or business-ready tables, the approach demonstrated here enables consistency, observability, and automation across all pipelines. With Fabric’s unified compute, orchestration, and monitoring, teams can now integrate DQ as a first-class citizen not an afterthought. Links: Implement medallion lakehouse architecture in Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn GX Expectations Gallery • Great ExpectationsSecure Delta Sharing Between Databricks Workspaces Using NCC and Private Endpoints
This guide walks you through the steps to share Delta tables between two Databricks workspaces (NorthCentral and SouthCentral) and configure Network Connectivity Configuration (NCC) for a Serverless Warehouse. These steps ensure secure data sharing and connectivity for your workloads. Part 1: Delta Sharing Between Workspaces Access Delta Shares From your NorthCentral Workspace, go to Catalog. Hover over Delta Shares Received. When the icon appears, click it. → This will redirect you to the Delta Sharing page. Create a New Recipient On the Delta Sharing page, click Shared by me. Click New Recipient. Fill in the details: Recipient Name: (Enter your recipient name) Recipient Type: Select Databricks Sharing Identifier: azure:southcentralus:3035j6je88e8-91-434a-9aca-e6da87c1e882 To get the sharing identifier using a notebook or Databricks SQL query: (SQL) SELECT CURRENT_METASTORE(); Click Create. Share Data Click "Share Data". Enter a Share Name. Select the data assets you want to share. Note: Please disable History for the selected data assets, as the current data snapshot. Disabling the History option on the Delta Share will simplify the share and prevent unnecessary access to historical versions. Additionally, review whether you can further simplify your share by partitioning the data where appropriate. Add the recipient's name you created earlier. Click Share Data. Add Recipient From the newly created share, click Add Recipient. Select your South-Central Workspace Metastore ID. South-CentralWorkspace In your South-Central Workspace, navigate to the Delta Sharing page. Under Shared with me tab, locate your newly created share and click on it. Add the share to a catalog in Unity Catalog. Part 2: Enable NCC for Serverless Warehouse 6. Add Network Connectivity Configuration (NCC) Go to the Databricks Account Console: https://accounts.azuredatabricks.net/ Navigate to Cloud resources, click Add Network Connectivity Configuration. Fill in the required fields and create a new NCC for SouthCentral. 7. Associate NCC with Workspace In the Account Console, go to Workspaces. Select your SouthCentral workspace, click Update Workspace. From the Network Connectivity Configuration dropdown, select the NCC you just created. 8. Add Private Endpoint Rule In Cloud resources, select your NCC, select Private Endpoint Rules and click Add Private Endpoint Rule. Provide: Resource ID: Enter your Storage Account Resource ID in NorthCentral. Note: This can be found in your storage account (NorthCentral). Click on “JSON View” top right. Azure Subresource type: dfs & blob. 9. Approve Pending Connection Go to your NorthCentral Storage Account, Networking, Private Endpoints. You will see a Pending connection from Databricks. Approve the connection and you will see the Connection status in your Account Console as ESTABLISHED. You will now see your share listed under “Delta Shares Received” Note: If you cannot view your share, run the following SQL command: GRANT USE_PROVIDER ON METASTORE TO `username@xxxx.com`.
Defining the Raw Data Vault with Artificial Intelligence
This Article is Authored By Michael Olschimke, co-founder and CEO at Scalefree International GmbH. The Technical Review is done by Ian Clarke, Naveed Hussain – GBBs (Cloud Scale Analytics) for EMEA at Microsoft The Data Vault concept is used across the industry to build robust and agile data solutions. Traditionally, the definition (and subsequent modelling) of the Raw Data Vault, which captures the unmodified raw data, is done manually. This work demands significant human intervention and expertise. However, with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), we are witnessing a paradigm shift in how we approach this foundational task. This article explores the transformative potential of leveraging AI to define the Raw Data Vault, demonstrating how intelligent automation can enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, ultimately unlocking new levels of insight and agility for organizations. Note that this article describes a solution to AI-generated Raw Data Vault models. However, the solution is not limited to Data Vault, but allows the definition of any data-driven, schema-on-read model to integrate independent data sets in an enterprise environment. We discuss this towards the end of this article. Metadata-Driven Data Warehouse Automation In the early days of Data Vault, all engineering was done manually: an engineer would analyse the data sources and their datasets, come up with a Raw Data Vault model in an E/R tool or Microsoft Visio, and then develop both the DDL code (CREATE TABLE) and the ELT / ETL code (INSERT INTO statements). However, Data Vault follows many patterns. Hubs look very similar (the difference lies in the business keys) and are loaded similarly. We discussed these patterns in previous articles of this series, for example, when covering the Data Vault model and implementation. In most projects where Data Vault entities are created and loaded manually, a data engineer eventually develops the idea of creating a metadata-driven Data Vault generator due to these existing patterns. The effort to build a generator is too considerable, and most projects are better off using an off-the-shelf solution such as Vaultspeed. These tools come with a metadata repository and a user interface for setting up the metadata and code templates required to generate the Raw Data Vault (and often subsequent layers). We have discussed Vaultspeed in previous articles of this series. By applying the code templates to the metadata defined by the user, the actual code for the physical model is generated for a data platform, such as Microsoft Fabric. The code templates define the appearance of hubs, links, and satellites, as well as how they are loaded. The metadata defines which hubs, links, and satellites should exist to capture the incoming data set consistently. Manual development often introduces mistakes and errors that result in deviations in code quality. By generating the data platform code, deviations from the defined templates are not possible (without manual intervention), thus raising the overall quality. But the major driver for most project teams is to increase productivity. Instead of manually developing code, they generate the code. Metadata-driven generation of the Raw Data Vault is standard practice in today's projects. Today’s project tasks have therefore changed: while engineers still need to analyse the source data sets and develop a Raw Data Vault model, they no longer create the code (DDL/ELT). Instead, they set up the metadata that represents the Raw Data Vault model in the tool of their choice. Each data warehouse automation tool comes with its specific features, limitations, and metadata formats. The data engineer/modeler must understand how to transfer the Raw Data Vault model into the data warehouse automation tool by correctly setting up the metadata. This is also true for Vaultspeed; the data modeler can set up the metadata either through the user interface or via the SDK. This is the most labour-intensive task concerning the Raw Data Vault layer. It also requires experts who not only know Data Vault modelling but also know (or can analyse) the source systems' data and understand the selected data warehouse automation solution. Additionally, Data Vault is not equal to Data Vault in many cases, as it allows for a very flexible interpretation of how to model a Data Vault, which also leads to quality issues. But what if the organization has no access to such experts? What if budgets are limited, time is of the essence, or there are no available experts in sufficient numbers in the field? As Data Vault experts, we can debate the value of Data Vault as much as we want, but if there are no experts capable of modeling it, the debate will remain inconclusive. And what if this problem is only getting worse? In the past, a few dozen source tables might have been sufficient to be processed by the data platform. Today, several hundred source tables could be considered a medium-sized data platform. Tomorrow, there will be thousands of source tables. The reason? There is not only an exponential growth in the volume of data to be produced and processed, but it also comes with an exponential growth in the complexity of data shape. The source of this exponential growth in data shape comes from more complex source databases, APIs that produce and deliver semi-structured JSON data, and, ultimately, more complex business processes and an increasing amount of generated and available data that needs to be analysed for meaningful business results. Generating the Data Vault using Artificial Intelligence Increasingly, this data is generated using artificial intelligence (AI) and still requires integration, transformation, and analysis. The issue is that the number of data engineers, data modelers, and data scientists is not growing exponentially. Universities around the world only produce a limited number of these roles, and some of us would like to retire one day. Based on our experience, the increase in these roles is linear at best. Even if you argue for exponential growth in these roles, it is evident that there is no debate about a growing gap between the increasing data volume and the people who should analyse it. This gap cannot be closed by humans in the future. Even in a world where all kids want to become and eventually work in a data role. Sorry for all the pilots, police officers, nurses, doctors, etc., there is no way for you to retire without the whole economy imploding. Therefore, the only way to close the gap is through the use of artificial intelligence. It is not about reducing the data roles. It's about making them efficient so that they can deal with the growing data shape (and not just the volume). For a long time, it was common sense in the industry that, if an artificial intelligence could generate or define the Raw Data Vault, it would be an assisting technology. The AI would make recommendations, for example, such as which hubs or links to model and which business keys to use. The human data modeler would make the final decision, with input from the AI. But what if the AI made the final decision? What would it look like? What if one could attach data sources to the AI platform and the AI would analyze the source datasets, come up with a Raw Data Vault model, and load that model into Vaultspeed or another data warehouse automation tool, know the source system’s data, know Data Vault modelling, and understand the selected data warehouse automation? These questions were posed by Michael Olschimke, a Data Vault and AI expert, when initially considering the challenge. He researched the distribution of neural networks on massively parallel processing (MPP) clusters to classify unstructured data at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. This prior AI research, combined with the knowledge he accumulated in the Data Vault, enabled him to build a solution that later became known as Flow.BI. Flow.BI as a Generative AI to Define the Raw Data Vault The solution is simple, at least from the outside: attach a few data sources, let the AI do the rest. Flow.BI supports several data sources already, including Microsoft SQL Server and derivatives, such as Synapse and Fabric, as long as a JDBC driver is available, Flow.BI should eventually be able to analyze the data source. And the AI doesn’t care if the data originates from a CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics, or an e-commerce platform; it's just data. There are no provisions in the code to deal with specific datasets, at least for now. The goal of Flow.BI is to produce a valid, that is, consistent and integrated, enterprise data model. Typically, this follows a Data Vault design, but it's not limited to that (we’ll discuss this later in the article). This is achieved by following a strict data-driven approach that imitates the human data modeler. Flow.BI needs data to make decisions, just like its human counterpart. Source entities with no data will be ignored. It only requires some metadata, such as the available entities and their columns. Datatypes are nice-to-have; primary keys and foreign keys would improve the target model, just like entity and column descriptions. But they are not required to define a valid Raw Data Vault model. Humans write this text, and as such, we like to influence the result of the modelling exercise. Flow.BI is appreciating this by offering many options for the human data modeler to influence the engine. Some of them will be discussed in this article, but there are many more already available and more to come. Flow.BI’s user interface is kept as lean and straightforward as possible: the solution is designed so that the AI should take the lead and model the whole Raw Data Vault. The UI’s purpose is to interact with human data modelers, allowing them to influence the results. That’s what many screens are related to - and the configuration of the security system. A client can have multiple instances, which result in independent Data Vault models. This is particularly useful when dealing with independent data platforms, such as those used by HR, the compliance department, or specific business use cases, or when creating the raw data foundation for data products within a data mesh. In this case, a Flow.BI instance equals a data product. But don’t underestimate the complexity of Flow.BI: The frontend is used to manage a large number of compute clusters that implement scalable agents to work on defining the Raw Data Vault. The platform is implementing full separation of data and processing, not only by client but also by instance. Mapping Raw Data to Organizational Ontology The very first step in the process is to identify the concepts in the attached datasets. For this purpose, there is a concept classifier that analyses the data and recognizes datasets and their classified concepts that it has seen in the past. A common requirement of clients is that they would like to leverage their organizational requirements in this process. While Flow.BI doesn’t know a client’s ontology; it is possible to override (and in some cases, complete) the concept classifications and refer to concepts from the organizational ontology. By doing so, Flow.BI will integrate the source system’s raw data into the organization's ontology. It will not create a logical Data Vault, which is where the Data Vault model reflects the desired business, but instead model the raw data as the business uses it, and therefore follow the data-driven Data Vault modeling principles that Michael Olschimke has taught to thousands of students over the years at Scalefree. Flow.BI also allows the definition of a multi-tenant Data Vault model, where source systems either provide multi-tenant data or are assigned to a specific tenant. In both cases, the integrated enterprise data model will be extended to allow queries across multiple tenants or within a single tenant, depending on the information consumer’s needs. Ensuring Security and Privacy Flow.BI was designed with security and privacy in mind. From a design perspective, this has two aspects: Security and privacy in the service itself, to protect client solutions and related assets Security and privacy are integral to the defined model, allowing for the effective utilization of Data Vault’s capabilities in addressing security and privacy requirements, such as satellite splits. While Flow.BI is using a shared architecture; all data and metadata storage and processing are separated by client and instance. However, this is often not sufficient for clients as they hesitate to share their highly sensitive data with a third party. For this reason, Flow.BI allows two critical features: Local data storage: instead of storing client data on Flow.BI infrastructure, the client provides an Azure Data Lake Storage to be used for storing the data. Local data processing: A Docker container can be deployed into the client’s infrastructure to access the client's data sources, extract the data, and process it. When using both options, only metadata, such as entity and column names, constraints, and descriptions, are shared with Flow.BI. No data is transferred from the client’s infrastructure to Flow.BI. The metadata is secured on Flow.BI’s premises as if it were actual data: row-level security separates the metadata by instance, and roles and permissions are defined per client who can access the metadata and what they can do with it. But security and privacy are not limited to the service itself. The defined model also utilizes the security and privacy features of Data Vault. For example, it enables the classification of source columns based on security and privacy. The user can set up security and privacy classes and apply them to the influence screen for both. By doing so, the column classifications are used when defining the Raw Data Vault and can later be used to implement a satellite split in the physical model (if necessary). An upcoming release will include an AI model for classifying columns based on privacy, utilizing data and metadata to automate this task. Tackling Multilingual Challenges A common challenge for clients is navigating multilingual data environments. Many data sources use English entity and column names, but there are systems using metadata in a different language. Also, the assumption that the data platform should use English metadata is not always correct. Especially in government clients, the use of the official language is mandatory. Both options, translating the source metadata to English (the default within Flow.BI) and translating the defined target model into any target language, are supported by Flow.BI’s translations tab on the influence screen: The tab utilizes an AI translator to fully automatically translate the incoming table names, column names, and concept names. However, the user can step in and override the translation to improve it to their needs. All strings of the source metadata and the defined model are passed through the translation module. It is also possible to reuse existing translations for a growing list of popular data sources. This feature enables readable names for satellites and their attributes (as well as hubs and links), resulting in a significantly improved user experience for the defined Raw Data Vault. Generating the Physical Model You should have noticed by now that we consistently discuss the defined Raw Data Vault model. Flow.BI is not generating the physical model, that is, the CREATE TABLE and INSERT INTO statements for the Raw Data Vault. Instead, it “just” defines the hubs, links, and satellites required for capturing all incoming data from the attached data sources, including business key selection, satellite splits, and special entity types, such as non-historized links and their satellites, multi-active satellites, hierarchical links, effectivity satellites, and reference tables. Video on Generating Physical Models This logical model (not to be confused with “logical Data Vault modelling”) is then provided to our growing number of ISV partner solutions that will consume our defined model, set up the required metadata in their tool, and generate the physical model. As a result, Flow.BI acts as a team member that analyses your organizational data sources and their data, knows how to model the Raw Data Vault, and how to set up metadata in the tool of your choice. The metadata is provided by Flow.BI can be used to model the landing zone/staging area (either on a data lake or a relational database such as Microsoft Fabric) and the Raw Data Vault in a data-driven Data Vault architecture, which is the recommended practice. With this in mind, Flow.BI is not a competition to Vaultspeed or your other existing data warehouse automation solution, but a valid extension that integrates with your existing tool stack. This makes it much easier to justify the introduction of Flow.BI to the project. Going Beyond Data Vault Flow.BI is not limited to the definition of Data Vault models. While it has been designed with the Data Vault concepts in mind, a customizable expert system is used to define the Data Vault model. Although the expert system is not yet publicly available, it has already been implemented and is in use for every model generation. This expert system enables the implementation of alternative data models, provided they adhere to data-driven, schema-on-read principles. Data Vault is such an example, but many others are possible, as well: Customized Data Vault models Inmon-style enterprise models in third-normal form (3NF, if no business logic is required Kimball-style analytical models with facts and dimensions, again without business logic Semi-structured JSON and XML document collections Key-value stores “One Big Table (OBT)” models “Many Big Related Table (MBRT)” models Okay, we’ve just invented the MBRT model as we're writing the article, but you get the idea: many large, fully denormalized tables with foreign–key relationships between each other. If you've developed your data-driven model, please get in touch with us. About the Authors Michael Olschimke is co-founder and CEO of Flow.BI, a generative AI that defines integrated enterprise data models, such as (but not limited to) Data Vault. Michael has trained thousands of industry data warehousing professionals, taught academic classes, and published regularly on topics around data platforms, data engineering, and Data Vault. He has over two decades of experience in information technology, with a specialization in business intelligence topics, artificial intelligence and data platforms. <<< Back to Blog Series Title Page
Secure Medallion Architecture Pattern on Azure Databricks (Part I)
This article presents a security-first pattern for Azure Databricks: a Medallion Architecture where Bronze, Silver and Gold each run as their Lakeflow Job and cluster, orchestrated by a parent job. Run-as identities are Microsoft Entra service principals; storage access is governed via Unity Catalog External Locations backed by the Access Connector’s managed identity. Least-privilege is enforced with cluster policies and UC grants. Prefer managed tables to unlock Predictive Optimisation, Automatic liquid clustering and Automatic statistics. Secrets live in Azure Key Vault and are read at runtime. Monitor reliability and cost with system tables and Jobs UI. Part II covers more low-level concepts and CI/CD.External Data Sharing With Microsoft Fabric
The demands and growth of data for external analytics consumption is rapidly growing. There are many options to share data externally and the field is very dynamic. One of the most frictionless and easy onboarding steps for external data sharing we will explore is with Microsoft Fabric. This external data allows users to share data from their tenant with users in another Microsoft Fabric tenant.Closing the loop: Interactive write-back from Power BI to Azure Databricks
This is a collaborative post from Microsoft and Databricks. We thank Toussaint Webb, Product Manager at Databricks, for his contributions. We're excited to announce that the Azure Databricks connector for Power Platform is now Generally Available. With this integration, organizations can seamlessly build Power Apps, Power Automate flows, and Copilot Studio agents with secure, governed data and no data duplication. A key functionality unlocked by this connector is the ability to write data back from Power BI to Azure Databricks. Many organizations want to not only analyze data but also act on insights quickly and efficiently. Power BI users, in particular, have been seeking a straightforward way to “close the loop” by writing data back from Power BI into Azure Databricks. This capability is now here - real-time updates and streamlined operational workflows with the new Azure Databricks connector for Power Platform. With this connector, users can now read from and write to Azure Databricks data warehouses in real time, all from within familiar interfaces — no custom connectors, no data duplication, and no loss of governance. How It Works: Write-backs from Power BI through Power Apps Enabling writebacks from Power BI to Azure Databricks is seamless. Follow these steps: Open Power Apps and create a connection to Azure Databricks (documentation). In Power BI (desktop or service), add a Power Apps visual to your report (purple Power Apps icon). Add data to connect to your Power App via the visualization pane. Create a new Power App directly from the Power BI interface, or choose an existing app to embed. Start writing records to Azure Databricks! With this integration, users can make real-time updates directly within Power BI using the embedded Power App, instantly writing changes back to Azure Databricks. Think of all the workflows that this can unlock, such as warehouse managers monitoring performance and flagging issues on the spot, or store owners reviewing and adjusting inventory levels as needed. The seamless connection between Azure Databricks, Power Apps, and Power BI lets you close the loop on critical processes by uniting reporting and action in one place. Try It Out: Get started with Azure Databricks Power Platform Connector The Power Platform Connector is now Generally Available for all Azure Databricks customers. Explore more in the deep dive blog here and to get started, check out our technical documentation. Coming soon we will add the ability to execute existing Azure Databricks Jobs via Power Automate. If your organization is looking for an even more customizable end-to-end solution, check out Databricks Apps in Azure Databricks! No extra services or licenses required.
