Chris Webb
@cwebbbi.bsky.social
I work at Microsoft on the Fabric CAT team. Posts are my own.
Using Fabric Operations Agents and Workspace Monitoring with #PowerBI blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/07/19/u...
Using Fabric Operations Agents and Workspace Monitoring with Power BI
A simple example of using an Operations Agent to watch for broken visuals in a Power BI report
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
The benefits of using Direct Lake mode in #PowerBI blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/07/12/t...
Understanding the "Database was evicted to balance the CPU load" error in #PowerBI blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Power BI DirectQuery mode: a better choice than you might think blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/06/28/p...
Power BI DirectQuery mode: a better choice than you might think
Using DirectQuery on Fabric Warehouse or the SQL Endpoint of a Lakehouse is great for large data volumes
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Improve performance of staging in Fabric Dataflows Gen2 by disabling V-Order blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/06/14/i...
Improve performance of staging in Fabric Dataflows Gen2 by disabling V-Order
Disabling V-Order on staged data makes staging faster
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and concurrent evaluation, part 3: is more parallelism always good? blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/06/07/f...
Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and concurrent evaluation, part 3: is more parallelism always good?
More parallelism does not always result in faster performance and can cause errors
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and concurrent evaluation, part 2: partitioned compute blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/05/31/f...
Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and concurrent evaluation, part 2: partitioned compute
How to control concurrency within a dataflow when partitioned compute is used
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
The "You've exceeded the capacity limit for dataset refreshes" error in #PowerBI blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/05/17/u...
The "You've exceeded the capacity limit for dataset refreshes" error in Power BI
Refreshing too many semantic models at the same time on a capacity can cause this error
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Power BI semantic model memory errors, part 5: the "maximum allowable memory allocation" error blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/05/10/p...
Connecting #PowerBI semantic models to data sources automatically with binding hints blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/05/03/c...
Connecting Power BI semantic models to data sources automatically with binding hints
Configure your semantic model so it connects to a Shareable Cloud Connection immediately after publishing
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Thinking back about this topic again on the heels of coming back from SQLBits: Why Aren’t People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? www.brentozar.com/archive/2025...
Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
Steve Jones recently posted an update about SQL Saturday’s status, and it includes some news we need to talk about: However, this year the number may stagnate or even decline slightly. Running events…
brentozar.com
Generating sample data in Fabric Dataflows with FabricAI.Prompt() blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/04/26/g...
Generating sample data in Fabric Dataflows with FabricAI.Prompt
The FabricAI.Prompt can be used to generate CSV data
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Back home from #sqlbits. There are other Microsoft data conferences but, after 20 years of attending, none of the others have had anything like the same impact on my life and my career. This year it was better than ever. As always, thanks to the organisers, helpers, speakers and sponsors!
Role-playing dimensions in Fabric Direct Lake semantic models revisited blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/04/05/r...
Role-playing dimensions in Fabric Direct Lake semantic models revisited
A workaround to allow you to create multiple tables in a Direct Lake semantic model linked to the same table in OneLake
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Interested in attending the European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference? Then book your ticket today to save €600! 📆 Sep 28 - 01 Oct 2026 📍CCIB, Barcelona, Spain 🎫 https://www.sharepointeurope.com/european-microsoft-fabric-community-conference-tickets/ #MicrosoftFabric #MIcrosoftSQL
When can Partitioned Compute help Fabric Dataflow performance? blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/03/15/w...
When can Partitioned Compute help improve Fabric Dataflow performance?
Partitioned Compute lets you parallelise tasks inside a Dataflow
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
A closer look at Preview-Only steps in Fabric Dataflows blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/03/08/a...
Chris Webb's BI Blog: A Closer Look At Preview-Only Steps In Fabric Dataflows
I have been spending a lot of time recently investigating the new performance-related features that have rolled out in Fabric Dataflows over the last few months, so expect a lot of blog posts on th…
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
#PowerBI, parallelism and dependencies between SQL queries in DirectQuery mode blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/02/22/p...
Power BI, parallelism and dependencies between SQL queries in DirectQuery mode
How strict and eager evaluation can affect parallelism in DirectQuery mode
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Measuring time to display for image visuals in #PowerBI with Performance Analyzer blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/01/18/m...
Measuring the time to display image visuals in Power BI with Performance Analyzer
Large images can make reports slow
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Measuring geocoding performance in #PowerBI map visuals with Performance Analyzer blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/01/11/m...
Measuring geocoding performance in Power BI map visuals using Performance Analyzer
Geocoding could be making your report slow
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Diagnosing #PowerBI DirectQuery performance problems caused by SQL queries that return large resultsets blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/01/04/d...
Diagnosing Power BI DirectQuery performance problems caused by SQL queries that return large resultsets
Large resultsets can be slow to read
blog.crossjoin.co.uk
Diagnosing #PowerBI DirectQuery connection limit problems with Performance Analyzer blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2025/12/28/d...
Diagnosing Power BI DirectQuery connection limit problems with Performance Analyzer
See when a DirectQuery report is slow because there are limited connections back to the source
blog.crossjoin.co.uk