Joel Tan

2026

From 78% to DP-700 Certified: My Two-Week AI Study System

Two weeks before my DP-700 exam, I scored 78% on Microsoft’s practice assessment. Close. But still below its exam-readiness recommendation....

August 15, 2026

Productivity Without the Hype

The Missing Business Case for Medallion Architecture

Most Medallion explainers say what each layer does, never why it exists. The answer: Silver is the modern Operational Data Store.

Medallion architecture with bronze silver gold layers and ODS comparison diagram

July 26, 2026

Data Engineering: Systems That Stay Up

Materialized Lake Views Meet Kimball: Where Incremental Refresh Falls Apart

Is the 40-year-old Kimball dimensional model compatible with modern Materialized Lake Views? One Fabric engineer’s deep dive into late-arriving dimension corrections, incremental refresh limits, and why the real optimisation isn’t faster refreshes — it’s smaller ones.

July 22, 2026

Data Engineering: Systems That Stay Up

Web Scraping in Fabric: It’s a Rendering Problem, Not a Scraping Problem

Most web scraping problems aren’t really scraping problems. They’re rendering problems. Here’s what I learned when Power Query returned an empty div and Web Browser Content saved the day.

June 18, 2026

Data Engineering: Systems That Stay Up

Microsoft Fabric OneLake Security Is Finally GA — Here’s What You Need To Know

OneLake security just hit GA in May 2026 — and it’s a game-changer for Microsoft Fabric governance. Here’s how the new unified data plane security model closes the gaps between Power BI, Spark, and SQL analytics endpoints, with real code and gotchas I’ve learned the hard way.

Microsoft Fabric OneLake Security GA - secure data lake with role-based access control in Fabric

May 21, 2026

Data Engineering: Systems That Stay Up

Microsoft Fabric ETL: Escape the Notebook Monolith

We’ve all been there: it starts as a simple proof-of-concept. You open up a new Notebook in Microsoft Fabric, write...

Microsoft Fabric - Objected Orientated Programming

March 5, 2026

Data Engineering: Systems That Stay Up

Using an AI Agent for Code Review (Without Letting It Merge Code)

Code review is where systems stay good, but it is also where teams burn out. This guide shows you how to deploy a “tireless junior reviewer” using GitHub Actions—an AI agent that provides structured feedback without the risks of auto-merging or authority.