#PBIMCR - Feb 2024 - featuring Matt Lakin & Andy Cutler

## Details

#PBIMCR Feb 2024 session

When: Thursday 29th February 2024
Time: arrive for 5:45pm with talks starting from 6pm start prompt
Location: Number 1 Spinningfields, 1 Hardman Street, Manchester, M3 3EB
Session will not be streamed over MS Teams
Complimentary drinks & pizza provided by our hosts & sponsors Robert Walters
February's PBIMCR will feature Matt Lakin and Andy Cutler.

Session 1 - Matt Lakin: Get a Load of this - Realistic Load Testing for Power BI, explained!
Are you a Power BI developer or admin?

Do you have Power BI reports that work great during development and UAT, but performance drops once released to production with multiple users?

Or perhaps you're a decision maker, and want to know how much Premium capacity to buy? Or whether you need to invest in Fabric?

You need automated Power BI Load Testing!

In this session we will discuss Power BI production report performance woes by answering:

- Why do Power BI performance issues arise unexpectantly in production?
- Why do we need load testing?
- How can we carry out load testing with Power BI reports?
- How can we use load testing to understand what the right level of Premium capacity is for our tenant?
- How can we use Load Testing to quantify the benefits of DirectLake mode in Fabric?

We will go through a live demo of the Realistic Load Tool, which uses a PowerShell script to replicate a specified amount of users opening a report simultaneously. We will discuss what to keep in mind when using the tool, what are its restrictions, and how to use it most effectively for your own reports.

Speaker Details - Matt Lakin
With a background in both Data Engineering and Visualisation, Matt is an expert in modelling and visualising data, and is enthusiastic about using this to enable insightful storytelling and informed decision making, specifically in Power BI.

Matt is currently Visualisation Manager at Barratt Developments, and Co-organizer of the Newcastle Power BI User Group in the UK.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattlakin/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/datalakin

Session 2 - Andy Cutler: Synapse Data Warehousing in Fabric: It's all just SQL...Or is it?
Fabric is Microsoft's new platform on the block, covering the world of lakehouses, warehouses, real-time streaming, data engineering, and Power BI data modelling and reporting. In this session we'll be looking at the Microsoft Fabric Warehouse service and how it differs from the SQL services we all know and love from Microsoft. We'll look at how and why it's different, and dive into the differences we need to be aware of when developing data solutions.

It's all just SQL...or is it?

Speaker Details - Andy Cutler
Andy is an Azure Data Platform professional working predominantly with Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL Pools), Data Factory, SQL Server and Power BI. He holds an MSc in Business Intelligence and Data Mining and is a current Microsoft Data Platform MVP.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andycutler/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrAndyCutler