Blog posts on Sam Debruyn

Cooling the Dell Perc H200

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 09:06:30 +0200

Today I’m writing down some advice on cooling a Dell Perc H200 card as this would have saved me some time if this post popped up on Google search when I was looking for it myself.

I have a custom-built server at home that I use for various tasks, one of which is serving as a NAS with TrueNAS. Since my motherboard didn’t have enough SATA ports, I added a Dell Perc H200 RAID controller.

Quick Tip: Fabric Runtime preinstalled packages

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:40:34 +0200

Today I have a quick tip for you. I thought that I could find the list of preinstalled Python packages somewhere on Microsoft Learn , but either Microsoft stopped publishing this, or I couldn’t find it. So with this tip, you can easily find the list of preinstalled packages in your Fabric Runtime environment.

All the different ways to authenticate to Azure SQL, Synapse, and Fabric

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 19:04:37 +0200

In this post I’ll go over all the details on acquiring access tokens to authenticate to any Microsoft SQL engine, including Azure SQL, Azure Synapse and Microsoft Fabric. We’ll explore users, service principals, managed identities, and Fabric Workspace Identity.

Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re looking to get programmatic access to your database / data warehouse, you’ll need to authenticate. In 2025, more often than not, you’ll be using Microsoft Entra ID to do so and this is where the fun begins.

All Microsoft Fabric icons for diagramming

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 13:26:42 +0200

Do you often have to draw up diagrams of data flows or data architectures and would you like to use Microsoft Fabric icons in your diagrams? Then this post is for you! I always found it hard to find the right icons I needed, so I’ve put them all on this single page for easy access, both as PNG and SVG.

I just took the new Fabric DP-700 Data Engineering Exam: here's what you should know

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 23:45:03 +0200

I took the new DP-700 exam, released just hours ago in beta, and I’m here to share my experience along with some tips to help you prepare.

Connecting Neon with dbt Cloud

Thu, 02 May 2024 09:06:22 +0200

If you’re looking to build a simple, serverless data stack, then you might have considered the amazing combo of dbt Cloud with Neon.

Neon is a fully managed cloud offering with serverless PostgreSQL databases. They separate storage and compute, which makes it easy to scale and manage your data. If your data is not “big”, then Neon is a great choice.

dbt Cloud is a cloud-based service for running dbt. It’s a great way to run dbt without having to manage infrastructure. It features a user-friendly IDE, scheduling, and monitoring.

Fabric: Lakehouse or Data Warehouse?

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:24:43 +0200

There are 2 kinds of companies currently active in the Microsoft data space: those who are migrating to Microsoft Fabric, and those who will soon be planning their migration to Microsoft Fabric. 😅 One question that often comes back is

Should I focus on the Lakehouse or the Data Warehouse?

Let’s answer that in this post. I can already tell you this: you’re asking the wrong question 😉

Is Microsoft Fabric just a rebranding?

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 10:53:24 +0200

It’s a question I see popping up every now and then. Is Microsoft Fabric just a rebranding of existing Azure services like Synapse, Data Factory, Event Hub, Stream Analytics, etc.? Is it something more? Or is it something entirely new?

I hate clickbait titles as much as you do. So, before we dive in, let me answer the question right away. No, Fabric is not just a rebranding. I would not even describe Fabric as an evolution (as Microsoft often does), but rather as a revolution! Now, let’s find out why.

My take-aways from Big Data London: Delta Lake & the open lakehouses

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 10:20:35 +0100

Last week I attended Big Data London. Both days were filled with interesting sessions, mostly focussing on one of the vendors also exhibiting at the conference. There are 2 things I am taking away from this conference: Delta Lake has won the data format wars, and your next data platform is either Snowflake, either an open Lakehouse.

Fabric end-to-end use case: Analytics Engineering part 2 - Reports

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 20:59:15 +0200

Welcome to the fifth part of a 5-part series on an end-to-end use case for Microsoft Fabric. This post will focus on the analytics engineering part of the use case.

In this series, we will explore how to use Microsoft Fabric to ingest, transform, and analyze data using a real-world use case. The series focuses on data engineering and analytics engineering. We will be using OneLake, Notebooks, Lakehouse, SQL Endpoints, Data Pipelines, dbt, and Power BI.

Fabric end-to-end use case: Analytics Engineering part 1 - dbt with the Lakehouse

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:59:11 +0200

Welcome to the fourth part of a 5-part series on an end-to-end use case for Microsoft Fabric. This post will focus on the analytics engineering part of the use case.

Fabric end-to-end use case: Data Engineering part 2 - Pipelines

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 09:59:04 +0200

Welcome to the third part of a 5-part series on an end-to-end use case for Microsoft Fabric. This post will focus on the data engineering part of the use case.

Fabric end-to-end use case: Data Engineering part 1 - Spark and Pandas in Notebooks

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 08:58:56 +0200

Welcome to the second part of a 5-part series on an end-to-end use case for Microsoft Fabric. This post will focus on the data engineering part of the use case.

Fabric end-to-end use case: overview & architecture

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 09:59:15 +0200

Welcome to the first part of a 5-part series on an end-to-end use case for Microsoft Fabric. This post will focus on the architecture overview of the use case.

All Microsoft Fabric icons for diagramming (old version)

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:58:42 +0200

The below content is the old version of the blog post. It is kept here for reference purposes. The new version can be found here .

Right-click and Save Link As… on the links below to download the ones you need.

All graphics and trademarks below are the property and copyright of the Microsoft group of companies. Use them according to the Microsoft Trademark and Brand Guidelines . I don’t work for Microsoft, I merely list them here for usage in software architecture diagrams demonstrating the usage of Microsoft Fabric and related technologies.

Let Fabric teach you how to code with Data Wrangler

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 10:22:38 +0200

I’m going to be honest with you. I’m bad at writing Pandas data transformation code. Throughout the years I mostly focussed on the Spark APIs in Scala and PySpark, SQL, dbt, and some others, but I find the Pandas APIs usually just confusing and hard to read. I don’t like the black box magic and lock-in of low-code solutions either. Did you know that Microsoft Fabric has the perfect middle ground for this? It’s called Data Wrangler. Let’s dive in!

How to use service principal authentication to access Microsoft Fabric's OneLake

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:28:11 +0200

Microsoft recently added support to authenticate to OneLake using service principals and managed identities. This allows users to access OneLake from applications without having to use a user account. Let’s see how this works.

A closer look at Microsoft Fabric pricing, billing, and autoscaling

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 09:17:06 +0200

If you’re considering using Microsoft Fabric, you’re probably thinking “How much is this going to cost me?” Continue reading to learn how Microsoft might have just created the most compelling data platform offering available today.

Migrating Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL to Microsoft Fabric

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 23:04:37 +0200

If all those posts about Microsoft Fabric have made you excited, you might want to consider it as your next data platform. Since it is very new, not all features are available yet and most are still in preview. You could already adopt it, but if you want to deploy this to a production scenario, you’ll want to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, you can already start preparing for the migration. Let’s dive into the steps to migrate to Microsoft Fabric. Today: starting from Synapse Dedicated SQL Pools.

Connect to Fabric Lakehouses & Warehouses from Python code

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 09:14:24 +0200

In this post, I will show you how to connect to your Microsoft Fabric Lakehouses and Warehouses from Python.

Preparing a migration to Microsoft Fabric: from Azure Synapse Serverless SQL

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 11:16:45 +0200

If all those posts about Microsoft Fabric have made you curious, you might want to consider it as your next data platform. Since it is very new, not all features are available yet and most are still in preview. You could already adopt it, but if you want to deploy this to a production scenario, you’ll want to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, you can already start preparing for the migration. Let’s dive into the paths to migrate to Microsoft Fabric. Today: starting from Synapse Serverless SQL Pools.

Microsoft Fabric's Auto Discovery: a closer look

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0200

In previous posts , I dug deeper into Microsoft Fabric’s SQL-based features and we even explored OneLake using Azure Storage Explorer . In this post, I’ll take a closer look at Fabric’s auto-discovery feature using Shortcuts. Auto-discovery, what’s that?

Fabric’s Lakehouses can automatically discover all the datasets already present in your data lake and expose these as tables in Lakehouses (and Warehouses).

Cool, right? At the time of writing, there is a single condition: the tables must be stored in the Delta Lake format. Let’s take a closer look.

Exploring OneLake with Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 09:30:57 +0200

Recap: OneLake & Delta Lake

One of the coolest things about Microsoft Fabric is that it nicely decouples storage and compute and it is very transparent about the storage: everything ends up in the OneLake. This is a huge advantage over other data platforms since you don’t have to worry about moving data around, it is always available, wherever you need it.

Welcome to the 3rd generation: SQL in Microsoft Fabric

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:15:11 +0200

While typing this blog post, I’m flying back from the Data Platform Next Step conference where I gave a talk about using dbt with Microsoft Fabric . DP Next Step was the first conference focussed on Microsoft data services right after the announcement of Microsoft Fabric so a lot of speakers were Microsoft employees and most of the talks had some Fabric content.

Fabric Fabric Fabric, what is it all about? In this post I’ll go deeper into what it is, why you should care and focus specifically on the SQL aspect of Fabric.

Filling the gaps in your code with the Terraform azapi provider for Azure

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 16:28:43 +0200

The cloud is just someone else’s computer and to manage that we prefer to use Infrastructure as Code (IaC). dataroots believes that IaC can benefit any team working with cloud resources and most often Terraform is our tool of choice there. As a data & cloud engineer focusing on Microsoft Azure, that is true for me as well. However, there have been a couple of hick-ups along the road.

Some interesting takeaways from this year's Techorama

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:37:50 +0200

Last week was a busy week for fans of the Microsoft technology stack like myself. Microsoft hosted its yearly developer conference, Microsoft Build, announcing lots of exciting updates to new and existing Azure services. In the meantime, the Belgian community of Microsoft technology users gathered in Kinepolis Antwerp for this year’s edition of Techorama.

Setting up your machine for local Terraform provider development

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 18:27:09 +0200

If you’ve been developing Terraform providers, you might have upgraded your machine to use the newly released Terraform 0.13. This version introduces a lot of changes related to where providers can be found.

Before version 0.13 you would just put the binary of your provider in ~/.terraform.d/plugins and you could start using your provider. There is a lot more to it in Terraform 0.13 and newer.

Installing the Azure Event Hubs Python SDK on Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 22:16:24 +0200

Since we’re going through some heat waves in Europe, I thought it might be interesting to start measuring the humidity, temperature and pressure in my apartment. To do so, I decided to use my Raspberry Pi 3 and the Pi Sense HAT running a Python script constantly sending measurements to an Azure Event Hub.

Debugging a Terraform provider

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 22:13:55 +0200

While contributing to a couple of Terraform providers I often found the need to set some breakpoints in the provider code and inspect what was going at runtime.

However, debugging Terraform providers is not that easy apparently… I found a way to do this VS Code, but feel free to drop me a line if you have some other tips & tricks and I’ll update this post.

Easy localization in Flutter with continuous integration

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 22:08:59 +0200

Did you know Flutter has built-in support for l10n, also known as localization? I’ve been searching for an easy way to localize my app, but most of the blog posts I’ve found rephrased the official documentation on internationalization .

I live in Belgium where we have 3 official locales: Flemish (nl_BE), Belgian French (fr_BE) and German (de_BE). L10n is the process of supporting multiple locales. This mainly relates to translated resources and formatting differences. I18n (internationalization) means that you also support different countries and cultures (e.g. different timezones, understanding that seasons are not the same everywhere in the world, different symbols…). A great app in Belgium should be localized for at least Dutch and French.

Create App Previews with the iOS Simulator

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:38:56 +0000

I don’t always have a ton of iOS devices lying around when I submit iOS apps to ~~iTunes~~ App Store Connect.

So I take my screenshots on the simulators. At the time of writing Apple requires screenshots made with an iPhone 8 Plus and an iPad Pro. You can optionally add screenshots from an iPhone XS Max. Apple then downscales them to all other iPhones or you can add screenshots for the other models yourself.

Tips for developing Android JobScheduler Jobs

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:01:27 +0100

If your app has to sync some data in the background, you’ll definitely want to use the Android JobScheduler API to schedule a background job.

There are a few helpful libraries that make this task easier, but you can get away with using the JobScheduler API itself.

Optimize memory usage in Xamarin apps

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 16:32:42 +0200

This post has been translated to Russian by Denis Gordin . You can read the Russian version on the Russian website TechMedia . Thanks, Denis!

Xamarin is amazing in how it allows .NET developers to write apps for Android, iOS, MacOS… in C#. But that amazing capability comes with a prize and even the most simple apps can suffer from high memory usage. Let’s find out what happens and what we can do about it. The majority of my examples are based on Xamarin.Android, but you’ll quickly notice how this also applies to Xamarin.iOS.

A few common issues with .csproj files in Xamarin apps

Thu, 25 May 2017 21:21:16 +0200

Usually you don’t need to manually edit .csproj files for your apps and most developers don’t even know what’s going on inside this file. However, sometimes you might run into issues related to this file where Visual/Xamarin Studio can’t help you.

The case of the missing references

At my current client our solution consists of more than 10 projects:

Diagnosing memory issues with the Xamarin profiler

Sun, 04 Sep 2016 16:29:47 +0200

The Xamarin profiler is a must-have tool for every Xamarin developer. The profiler comes with a Xamarin business or enterprise license and is available as a standalone installer at xamarin.com/profiler .

To get started, make sure a debug version of your app is installed on a device or a simulator (works both for Android and iOS). Another way to start the profiler is to open the profiler via Run > Start Profiling in Xamarin Studio or Analyze > Xamarin Profiler in Visual Studio. Choose the Memory profiling template, make sure the correct app/activity is selected and press the red record button to start profiling.

Creating a Xamarin.iOS binding project for dummies

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 11:10:40 +0200

What you need

Experience with Xamarin.iOS
Xamarin Studio for Mac
An empty binding project (just create a new project in Xamarin Studio)

A very short intro to Objective-C for C# developers

Oh god, Obj-C, the most incomprehensible programming language in the app dev world. You simply can’t create an iOS binding project without some very basic knowledge of Obj-C. So here goes, an intro to Obj-C for C# developers.

Fix common binding errors with MVVM Light on Xamarin

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 20:02:53 +0100

There isn’t much documentation available for MVVM Light when it comes to Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS. There are several overloads for the SetBinding method and using the wrong overload causes TargetInvocationException or TargetException like this one . It’s also possible that your bindings don’t update anymore after you set one binding using an incorrect syntax.

Setting up a Raspberry Pi as a git server for Windows clients

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:40:08 +0100

Sometimes you’re not allowed or you don’t want to publish source code on GitHub, Bitbucket etc. In this post, I’ll explain how you can set up a Raspberry Pi (or any other Linux server) as a git repository server and how you can configure Windows clients for that server. We’ll automate everything from authentication to creating and deleting repositories.

Dependency injection with Autofac and MVVM Light in Xamarin

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 18:59:37 +0100

You gotta have MVVM

A developer and his tools are inseparable. We all like SOLID and every (.NET) developer has his or her favourite dependency injection tool. There is a lot to choose from. I like Autofac because of the way it handles modules, the lifetime of a type and how it registers types.

Run Docker on Hyper-V with Docker Machine

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 23:43:40 +0200

Docker is awesome, right? And thanks to boot2docker Windows users were no longer left out of the fun.

Still, setting everything up could be a PITA and you had to install Oracle VirtualBox to use it as Docker containers were actually run inside of a VM (which was the purpose of boot2docker). If you use Hyper-V regularly, you’ll notice that you can’t have it both ways. Scott Hanselman figured out a way to make switching between the two a little bit less painful, but you still had to reboot your machine if you wanted to use VirtualBox.

How to fix common Hyper-V errors on Windows 10

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 22:38:46 +0200

This short post is more of a note to myself for when I run into the same problem. I just wasted an hour on it so I guess that justifies it.

So, what happened? I wanted to check out the new Docker Machine with Hyper-V support, but the Hyper-V Manager told me it could not connect to my local computer.

Docker image for Hugo builds (with Wercker)

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 18:56:39 +0200

This blog is built with Hugo , which allows me to use some great CI tools like Wercker . The first part of writing a wercker.yml is picking a build container.

A build container on Wercker is the environment in which your build or deploy steps run. Wercker used to build its own containers for that, but they’ve moved away from that approach to Docker containers. You can use all kinds of Docker containers, but most people just use one available publicly on Docker Hub .

Experiences with Windows 10 on a new Dell XPS 13 (2015)

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 07:51:16 +0200

Ordering a new workhorse

Windows 10 RTM has been out for about a month now after little less than a year of public Insider preview builds. The motherboard of my old, trusty, Asus laptop was slowly dying and the Dell XPS 13’s thinness and battery life looked very attractive. I decided to go for it and order a Dell XPS 13 (2015), without the touch screen. I hate dirty fingerprints on a screen and the better battery life of the version without the touch screen seemed like a better deal. I also ordered a USB 3 -> HDMI/VGA/Ethernet/USB 2 adapter from Dell.

Wercker step to minify static resources

Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:01:17 +0200

I recently blogged a lot about static websites and continuous integration . There was still one step missing in my continuous integration cycle: minification.

Wercker is a great CI tool and it allows you to create custom build steps that can be reused in several projects. So I created a build step to minify HTML, CSS and JS files.

Wercker step to validate Hugo themes

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 13:21:45 +0200

So last week, I created a material design theme for Hugo , a static site generator that I’m quite fond of](/tags/hugo/).

As I discovered Wercker , an awesome CI tool, I went looking for a way to automatically validate themes.

There wasn’t any, so I simply wrote a build step for Wercker . The build step validates a Hugo theme using an example site . It also checks if you included some files required for a future Hugo themes site.

Continuous integration with Hugo and Wercker

Tue, 14 Jul 2015 12:45:28 +0200

Why?

Who doesn’t love GitHub Pages ? It’s the easiest way to create a simple website about a repository and you can even use Jekyll to start blogging.

As I recently switched from Jekyll to Hugo , I needed a new way to enable continuous integration for my blog.

Material-lite theme for Hugo

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:00:00 +0200

Last week, I wrote a post about how awesome Hugo is and why I switched from Jekyll to Hugo.

Then, a few days later, Google released an awesome template called Material Design Lite . It’s basically Google’s famous Material Design in HTML, CSS and JavaScript instead of in Polymer .

An introduction to Hugo, a static site generator

Wed, 08 Jul 2015 14:50:29 +0200

A good blogging platform

What makes a good blogging platform really good? Well, that depends on the blogger. Programmers would need different features than make-up bloggers. As a programmer, I need to be able to easily integrate pieces of code with syntax highlighting in my posts and I’d prefer writing them in my favourite text/code editor instead of in a WYSIWYG editor.

Geocoding addresses in Talend Open Studio for Data Integration

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I had to geocode the addresses in a dataset using Talend. Geocoding is adding coordinates to addresses. This way you can easily visualize your data on a map.

I experienced problems when I tried to download some plugins from Talend Exchange but I found this blog post about geocoding without the use of a plugin. The blogpost wasn’t very clear so I decided to write a step-by-step explanation which you can find below. In this guide, we will be using the Google Geocoding API .

Natively boot Windows with a virtual HDD

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago Microsoft released a new build for Windows 10 and I wanted to give it a try. However, I didn’t want to resize my partitions or overwrite my Windows 8.1 partition.

Well, then install it in a VM!

Then I wouldn’t have access to all of my RAM and CPU, so that wasn’t a solution either. However, I found the ideal solution.

Queue for MessageDialog in Windows RT

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When I write Windows Store applications, I use MessageDialog a lot. It’s the easiest way to show a quick informative pop-up message or a question to the user. However, when you tend to use this quite often, you’ll probably run into a problem.

The Windows Runtime framework doesn’t allow you to stack MessageDialogs, queue them etc. So if you need to display one, you’ll have to make sure that no other MessageDialog is already open. Checking if there is an open MessageDialog is not that easy unless you keep references to all the MessageDialogs you create. There are a few cases in which this would be annoying.

Workaround for password confirmation with Laravel & Ardent

Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

While I was working on a website made with Laravel and Ardent I had to validate a password confirmation field for a user registration. This will not work if you follow the standard documentation.

This is how your validation rules in your Ardent model should look like (users only have an email address and a password):

Using markdown to create any kind of document

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I had to submit the contents of a GitHub repository to my teacher for grading. I wanted to use my readme.md-file while my teacher asked for a Word or a PDF document. Then I discovered this amazing program which converts Markdown to any desirable format!

Almost every programmer knows Markdown, right? The Markdown syntax is widely used on GitHub and in readme-files . Markdown was developed by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz as a tool to convert plain text files in the syntactic language with the same name to HTML.

Secure SSH access with 2-step authentication (extended)

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In this quick tutorial I’ll show you how to secure SSH access to your Linux server with 2-step authentication. Why did I call this post ’extended’? Because I’ll show you how to add extra rules so you don’t have to use 2-step authentication from certain locations.

I’m not going to explain what 2-step authentication is . You’ll need SSH or CLI access to your Linux device with root rights and a 2-step authentication app on your phone, tablet or PC:

Wake up your computer(s) with a simple email using a Raspberry Pi

Sun, 22 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I have a Spotify Premium subscription but I also have a few CDs which are not available on streaming services. I don’t like the whole process of syncing files, that’s why I took a Spotify subscription in the first place. Google offers a solution with Play Music : you can upload up to 20,000 songs to their servers for free and stream them to all of your devices. I didn’t use this because the Google Play Music app was too slow for my previous phone (Google Nexus S ). So I decided to put my CDs on a computer and use that computer as a server with Tonido . This way I could stream my music over the Internet to all of my devices. As a plus I could also put all my photos on this device so that I could show them to friends or family wherever I am.

Connecting Serviio with Telenet's Yelo TV

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Recently Belgian ISP Telenet introduced Yelo TV . It’s the new brand for all of their efforts to ~~innovate~~ with television. Yelo TV includes a series of apps for almost every device (except for Windows Phone) and a website on which you can watch live television, watch recordings or schedule recordings.