I’ve spent more than 25 years designing data platforms, and one thing I’ve learned is that the best ideas usually come from people sharing what actually worked, and what didn’t. This site is my way of giving some of that back. Everything here is practical guidance from the field, written to help you make better decisions on your own platform.
What I write about
- Microsoft Fabric: OneLake, lakehouses and warehouses, mirroring, Fabric IQ and data agents, and what’s actually ready for production.
- Azure Databricks: Unity Catalog, Medallion architecture, Lakeflow pipelines and performance tuning.
- Lakehouse design: open table formats, data modelling and patterns that teams can run day to day.
- Governance: security, quality, lineage and cost, designed in from the start rather than bolted on later.
- Power BI: semantic models, Direct Lake and reports people trust.
- AI agents, MCP and RAG: getting data ready for AI and building agents that give grounded, useful answers.
Ways to connect
I enjoy hearing from readers. If any of these sound like you, please say hello.
- Questions about a post: spotted something unclear, tried a pattern and hit a snag, or have a different view? I’m always glad to discuss it, and good questions often become future posts.
- Starting out or switching careers: if you’re new to data engineering or moving into data and AI, I’m happy to have an informal chat about learning paths, skills and what the work is really like.
- Talks, meetups and podcasts: I like speaking about Fabric, Databricks, lakehouse design and AI agents at community events and user groups.
- Guest posts: I’m open to writing for, or collaborating with, community blogs and publications.
- Community mentoring: I enjoy mentoring through community programmes and user groups, and helping people grow in their data careers.
The easiest way to reach me is through the contact page or LinkedIn. I read every message, though it may take me a little while to reply.
Views on this site are my own and don’t represent my employer.