Explicit Measures Podcast

Mike & Tommy tackle the emerging role of the semantic model as an AI contract layer in Microsoft Fabric, weighing in on whether Data Agents should reason over governed semantic models or hit OneLake directly. They explore the tension between years of invested business logic in semantic models and the flexibility of Lakehouse-first agent access, breaking down how OneLake Security, RLS, and semantic...

Mike & Tommy dive into Fabric Deployment Plans, exploring how this new Fabric item fills a real gap in CI/CD by giving teams explicit control over deployment order, pre- and post-deploy actions, and environment binding — things lineage alone never reliably handled. They weigh whether a visual canvas makes deployments more approachable or just hides what's really happening under the hood, and what...

Mike & Tommy weigh in on the Fabric IQ Ontology Agent, exploring whether a conversational interface built on structured business definitions finally makes ontology worth the investment—or just adds another layer for BI teams to govern. They break down the real cost of building and maintaining an ontology, who owns it when answers go wrong, and whether this changes how business users get to the tru...

Mike & Tommy dive into the Fabric Notebook Toolkit (FNTK), a Python library that makes end-to-end agentic development of Microsoft Fabric Notebooks possible from GitHub Copilot CLI, OpenAI Codex, and Claude Code. They break down whether putting AI agents in the driver's seat of notebook creation raises the bar for governance or just accelerates the chaos. Tune in to find out what guardrails, skill...

Mike & Tommy tackle PADU — Preferred, Accepted, Discouraged, and Unacceptable — and map the four-bucket framework onto Microsoft Fabric, exploring how teams can bring real governance and process architecture to a platform that gives you five ways to do everything. They weigh in on where Lakehouse, Git, Dataflows, Copilot, and self-service Power BI land on the scale, and why defining what your org...

Mike & Tommy tackle the question of whether Power BI should stay an analytics layer or evolve into an operational one, joined by Mike Zack — former CEO of Acterys, now part of Vena — who has built his career around closing the gap between insight and action. They weigh in on when write-back genuinely belongs in a report, who owns the data once users can change it, and what governance has to exist...

Mike & Tommy dive into the biggest announcements from FabCon Barcelona, breaking down how Fabric IQ, agentic app creation, ontology authoring, and a wave of platform updates are reshaping what Power BI and Fabric mean for everyday BI teams. They tackle whether the semantic model has officially become the center of the Microsoft AI universe, and what orgs need to do right now to be ready. From writ...

Mike & Tommy dive into why choosing the right AI model is one of the most consequential decisions a Power BI or Fabric team can make—and why most teams aren't making it deliberately at all. They explore the tension between cost, capability, and governance: when a frontier model is worth it, when a cheaper one is more than enough, and why letting a model review its own DAX is a governance risk hidi...

Mike & Tommy are joined one last time by Kurt Buhler as they dive into the agentic development of Power BI reports, wrestling with why generating a governed dashboard is so much harder than spinning up a web app or 3D model, and whether that friction is a platform problem, a data problem, or a skills problem. They tackle the biggest misconceptions teams have when pitching agentic BI internally...

Mike & Tommy are joined again by Kurt Buhler to tackle whether calling yourself a "Power BI person" is quietly capping your career in the age of AI, exploring how an AI-powered workflow expands your lens beyond a single tool to the full BI and application space, and why that shift should feel like liberation, not a threat. They dig into who gets empowered versus who feels replaced, a...

Mike & Tommy are joined again by Kurt Buhler and tackle the intersection of data literacy and AI literacy, exploring how self-awareness — or the lack of it — shapes the way teams build and consume Power BI and Microsoft Fabric solutions. They dig into whether AI raises the floor while lowering the ceiling, why poor data literacy can become more dangerous in an AI-assisted world, and how to kee...

Mike & Tommy are joined by Kurt Buhler as they dive into Fabric Apps and where they actually fit in the Power BI world, weighing whether they replace traditional reports, who owns them in a real org, and whether low code is getting cornered by AI agents. They break down the pre-requirements for success, the unlocks Fabric Apps offer that reports never will, and why ambition, visual literacy, and p...

Mike & Tommy tackle the Fabric handoff — exploring what it really takes to transition a Microsoft Fabric environment to an organization with no prior Fabric experience, and whether the real challenge is the platform or the change management behind it. They break down who needs to own Fabric after the consultants leave, what breaks first when a Power BI shop inherits a tenant they didn't build, and...

Mike & Tommy dive into how AI is actually changing data visualization work, exploring whether the real unlock is iteration speed rather than AI-built visuals, and why the "no enterprise license required" reality matters more than keynote promises. They tackle the governance risk of analysts using personal AI tools with real data, debate the conversational analyst vs. architect analyst divide, and...

Mike & Tommy break down the latest upgrades to Fabric Data Agents—MCP integration, OneLake Catalog discovery, multi-agent support, and Foundry Observability—and explore whether these changes finally move Data Agents from demo to production-ready. They weigh in on the real tension: whether easier connectivity creates governance sprawl, how "one agent per domain" reshapes the one-version-of-truth de...

Mike & Tommy dive into Liquid Clustering in Microsoft Fabric, breaking down why Runtime 2.0 changes it from an experimental feature into the default table layout strategy for Lakehouse workloads. They explore how incremental clustering solves the write amplification problems that plagued Runtime 1.3, why file skipping matters for Direct Lake and Power BI report performance, and how teams should th...

Mike & Tommy dive into whether medallion architecture has truly evolved in the Fabric era or whether teams are just re-labeling Bronze, Silver, and Gold with new icons, using this Microsoft Fabric community article as a jumping-off point. They break down when an all-in-one Warehouse pattern makes sense versus a hybrid Lakehouse approach, and walk away with a practical take on how much Spark you ac...

Mike & Tommy dive into what data visualization can teach us about critically evaluating LLMs, exploring why fluent, polished AI output can be just as misleading as a beautiful but inaccurate chart. They break down the tension between AI speed and data quality, tackling how BI teams can build a practical framework around accuracy, security, and sovereignty to use these tools without lowering their...

Mike & Tommy dive into Power BI Desktop Bridge, breaking down what it actually solves, where it fits in your stack alongside Desktop, Service, Fabric, Git, and deployment pipelines, and what it really takes to make it run like a Ferrari for your team. They tackle the hard questions — whether Desktop Bridge exposes weak development habits faster than it fixes them, how to keep speed from turning in...

Mike & Tommy dive into anonymous data access in Fabric Apps, exploring how the new capability lets builders deliver public-facing BI experiences without requiring users to sign in — and whether that's a governance breakthrough or a disaster waiting to happen. They break down which items support it, what tenant admins need to know, and how Rayfin fits into the story of Fabric becoming a true applic...

Mike & Tommy dive into the emerging pattern of Fabric as a Backend (FaaB), exploring whether Fabric is becoming the default way teams think about their entire data ecosystem or just a front-facing adoption tool. They weigh in on whether this pattern is a natural evolution of the platform or a case of forcing an analytics engine into an operational role — and what guardrails teams need before going...

Mike & Tommy dive into what agentic development actually means for Power BI teams, breaking down the crawl, walk, run framework for safely adopting AI agents across BI assets. They explore why the shift goes far beyond Copilot prompts, how semantic models become the center of the conversation, and whether most orgs are ready to trust agents with DAX, RLS, and report generation. Tune in for a pract...

Mike & Tommy dive into the Power BI Desktop Bridge preview, exploring how this new local API surface lets external tools and AI agents interact directly with a running Desktop session — and whether that changes report authoring forever. They break down the Report Authoring Skill showcase, weigh in on the governance risks of agent-driven edits outside of source control, and discuss what experienced...

Mike & Tommy tackle the hub-and-spoke composite model pattern, weighing in on whether splitting a bloated golden semantic model into a core hub with department-specific spokes delivers real simplification or just trades one problem for another. Prompted by Austin's question about avoiding a 100+ table behemoth, they break down what belongs in the hub, where DirectQuery connections start to hurt, a...

Mike & Tommy dive into the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI, breaking down what Microsoft's 19th consecutive Leader recognition actually means in an era where every vendor claims to be AI-first. They explore whether the real story is Power BI, Fabric, or the broader Microsoft ecosystem, and tackle the central tension of whether AI is making BI more powerful or just more confusing....