Data Engineering on Sam Debruyn

From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unlock the full potential of your Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse or Lakehouse. This session dives into dbt, a tool that streamlines SQL development within Fabric. It lowers the barrier of entry into the world of data analytics to everyone who ever wrote a line of SQL. Learn how dbt empowers data teams with functionalities like data documentation, automated testing, and data lineage for reliable and insightful analytics.

From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Meetup

Unlock the full potential of your Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse or Lakehouse. In this session, analytics engineers can learn from the top contributor to dbt-fabric what Microsoft Fabric is all about and how dbt is the perfect tool to build data transformations on Microsoft Fabric. We’ll cover the basics of Microsoft Fabric, how to connect dbt Cloud with Microsoft Fabric, and how to build our first Hello Fabric project.

Belgium dbt Meetup 14

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the fourteenth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup took place at BeCentral in the Brussels Central Station.

From Lock-In to Openness: The Shift in Data Platforms

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Website | Tickets | Agenda

Take a look at the marketing of any modern data platform and you’ll notice a common theme — they all emphasize their openness. But what does that really mean? What happened to the good old days of vendor lock-in? And how “open” are these platforms, really?

dbt fundamentals: an introduction to dbt in 2026 (workshop)

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Website | Tickets | Agenda

New to dbt? This hands-on tutorial is your launchpad. Starting from scratch, you’ll set up your first dbt project in dbt Platform’s Studio IDE against Microsoft Fabric, with no local setup required. By the end of the session, you’ll understand what dbt is, why it has become the backbone of modern analytics engineering, and how it fits into the broader data transformation landscape. You’ll work through the core building blocks of dbt: models, sources, seeds, and Jinja templating, before moving into macros, documentation, and testing. Every concept is reinforced with practical exercises, so you leave with working code. Whether you’re a data analyst or an engineer stepping into the analytics space, this tutorial gives you the foundation to hit the ground running on your first real dbt project.

Fabric Capacities: The Administrator's Guide

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Details & registration

Fabric Capacities are deceptively simple to provision — but one runaway query can throttle your entire organization. This session is the administrator’s deep dive into bursting, smoothing, overage debt, throttling, and the governance levers that keep workloads in check. We cover monitoring with the Capacity Metrics App and Real-Time Hub, cost optimization with reservations and autoscale billing, Spark and SQL Database governance, and practical sizing workflows to go from proof of concept to scaled adoption.

Thread by Thread: Lessons from Migrating to Fabric

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tickets | Schedule

Belgium dbt Meetup 13 - co-hosted with the Belgium Snowflake User Group

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I helped organizing the revival edition of the Belgium Snowflake User Group, in collaboration with Snowflake and Telenet. We made it a co-hosted dbt meetup, with presentations from Telenet, Snowflake, and dbt Labs.

SQL Resurgence: Unleashing data potential with dbt

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The largest Microsoft Fabric community event in Belgium

Thread by Thread: Lessons from Migrating to Fabric

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The largest Microsoft Fabric community event in Belgium

Agenda | Tickets

Belgium dbt Meetup 12

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the twelfth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by IBA in Louvain-La-Neuve.

Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Session details | Tickets

SQL Resurgence: Unleashing data potential with dbt

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tickets & registration | Schedule

Belgium dbt Meetup 11

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I co-organized the eleventh edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Port of Antwerp in Antwerp.

From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Session details | Tickets | Agenda

Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Details

A single Fabric Capacity is easy to set up. But what about the risk of a single user taking down your entire data estate with a poorly written query? In this session, we’ll explore how to split and configure Fabric Capacities for different workloads. Autoscaling, auto pause, bursting, smoothing, monitoring, and more, we’ll cover it all. By the end of this talk, you’re ready to build a scalable and robust design Fabric Workspace and Capacity design for the entire organization.

Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer

Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Session details | Tickets

Fabric Fortresses: Setting Up Microsoft Fabric for Your Enterprise Needs

Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Session details | Tickets

Join us to master Microsoft Fabric for enterprise-level challenges. Learn how to integrate private networking, manage resilience and disaster recovery, ensure seamless access control and configure vigilant monitoring to safeguard your data architecture. We’ll use Workspace Identity, Private Endpoints, and go through all the different ways to provide or restrict access to your data. By the end of this talk, you’ll be ready to build a robust and secure data platform on Microsoft Fabric.

Belgium dbt Meetup 10

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the tenth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Dataminded in Leuven.

Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Tickets | Agenda

Belgium dbt Meetup 9

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the ninth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Lighthouse in Ghent.

Fabric Fortresses: Setting Up Microsoft Fabric for Your Enterprise Needs

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More information, schedule, and tickets

Join us to master Microsoft Fabric for enterprise-level challenges. Learn how to integrate private networking, manage resilience and disaster recovery, ensure seamless access control and configure vigilant monitoring to safeguard your data architecture. We’ll use Workspace Identity, Private Endpoints, and go through all the different ways to provide or restrict access to your data. By the end of this talk, you’ll be ready to build a robust and secure data platform on Microsoft Fabric.

Belgium dbt Meetup 8

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the eigth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by DataSense in Hasselt.

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.

Medallion for Data Mesh: Exploring Workspace, Capacity, and Domain Design in Microsoft Fabric

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More information

Designing a medallion architecture is more than just setting up a few Lakehouses and Data Warehouses. In this session, data architects and engineers learn how to design a medallion architecture with Fabric Workspaces, Capacities, and Domains. We’ll cover the segregation of responsibilities, granular access control, and how to pick and choose the right Capacities for every workload. By the end of this talk, you’ll be ready to design a scalable and secure data platform with Microsoft Fabric.

Medallion for Data Mesh: Exploring Workspace, Capacity, and Domain Design in Microsoft Fabric

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tickets & registration | Schedule

Designing a medallion architecture is more than just setting up a few Lakehouses and Data Warehouses. In this session, data architects and engineers learn how to design a medallion architecture with Fabric Workspaces, Capacities, and Domains. We’ll cover the segregation of responsibilities, granular access control, and how to pick and choose the right Capacities for every workload. By the end of this talk, you’ll be ready to design a scalable and secure data platform with Microsoft Fabric.

Fabric Capacities: Divide and Conquer

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Tickets

A single Fabric Capacity is easy to set up. But what about the risk of a single user taking down your entire data estate with a poorly written query? In this session, we’ll explore how to split and configure Fabric Capacities for different workloads. Autoscaling, auto pause, bursting, smoothing, monitoring, and more, we’ll cover it all. By the end of this talk, you’re ready to build a scalable and robust design Fabric Workspace and Capacity design for the entire organization.

Medallion for Data Mesh: Exploring Workspace, Capacity, and Domain Design in Microsoft Fabric [EXTENDED TALK / DEEP-DIVE]

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More information | Tickets

Designing a medallion architecture is more than just setting up a few Lakehouses and Data Warehouses. In this session, data architects and engineers learn how to design a medallion architecture with Fabric Workspaces, Capacities, and Domains. We’ll cover the segregation of responsibilities, granular access control, and how to pick and choose the right Capacities for every workload. By the end of this talk, you’ll be ready to design a scalable and secure data platform with Microsoft Fabric.

SQL Resurgence: Unleashing Data Potential with dbt - session

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tickets

Join us on an exhilarating exploration of the data landscape as we delve into the phenomenon that is dbt. It has taken the world by storm and is now the most popular data transformation tool. Let’s dive into this new era and witness the renaissance of SQL at the core of data analytics, bringing it back to those who know the data best.

SQL Resurgence: Unleashing Data Potential with dbt - workshop

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Information | Tickets

NL dbt meetup: From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On the 20th of September, I spoke at the NL dbt meetup .

From Fabric to Fantastic: How dbt Makes Your Lakehouses and Warehouses Shine

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I gave a session on dbt at the Microsoft Fabric Global Online Conference. If you want to learn more about Microsoft Fabric, get your ticket for this free online event: https://microsoftfabric.global/

Belgium dbt Meetup 7

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the seventh edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by DPG Media in Vilvoorde.

Medallion for Data Mesh: Exploring Workspace, Capacity, and Domain Design in Microsoft Fabric

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On June 20th I spoke at the Fabric Brussels meetup.

Event details

Belgium dbt Meetup 6

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the sixth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by dataroots in Leuven.

Belgium dbt Meetup 5

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the fifth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Digital Hive in Hasselt.

SQL Resurgence - Unleashing Data Potential with dbt on Databricks

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I spoke at the Databricks meetup on how you can use dbt with SQL on Databricks to unleash the full potential of your data. The event was held at Cegeka in Antwerp, Belgium.

Speakers:

Sam Debruyn (tech lead data & cloud @ dataroots)
Fabrice Deseyn (data architect & team lead @ Cegeka)

Belgium dbt Meetup 4

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the fourth edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Datashift in Mechelen.

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 😉

Data Agility Unleashed: A Deep Dive into Microsoft Fabric's Features (dataroots Fabric Event)

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was invited to speak at the dataroots Microsoft Fabric Event in Leuven, Belgium. The event was held at De Hoorn, an old brewery in the city center.

Speakers:

Sam Debruyn (tech lead data & cloud @ dataroots)
Jonas Tundo (CEO @ dataroots)
Priya Sathy (Partner Director of Products @ Microsoft)

Pictures:

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.

Belgium dbt Meetup 3

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the third edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Astrafy in Brussels.

MotherDuck meetup

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

Together with MotherDuck , I organized the first global MotherDuck meetup at dataroots!

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.

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: 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.

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!

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.

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.

Belgium dbt Meetup 2

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the second edition of the Belgium dbt Meetup . The meetup was hosted by OTA Insight in Ghent.

dbt & Fabric: better together

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I gave a talk at the Data Platform Next Step conference in Billund, Denmark. The conference was the first conference with sessions about Microsoft Fabric right after the launch of the public preview at Microsoft Build .

dbt is the new data transformation tool taking the world by storm. It lowers the barrier of entry into the world of data analytics to everyone who ever wrote a line of SQL. Did you know it integrates quite well with all Microsoft SQL products and even with Fabric? Join this session to follow in the footsteps of thousands of analytics engineers and fall in love with dbt. Learn more about how dbt works with Fabric and Azure SQL from the maintainer of the official dbt adapter! We’ll use Fabric and VS Code to build our first Hello Fabric project.

Can you feel the breeze? Data-aware scheduling and more new features in Airflow

Tue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

Remember when you last used Airflow? You might have been scratching your head a few times. Recently Airflow has picked up a steady pace of releases packed with lots of interesting new features. In this talk we’ll go over them and see how they individually contribute to a new way to use Airflow.

Analytics Engineering Belgium Meetup 1

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Event details

I organized the first edition of the Analytics Engineering Belgium Meetup . The meetup was hosted by Ausy in Leuven.

Fabric training programs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using Microsoft Fabric since early 2023 and have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award specifically for Fabric. I have a deep understanding of the platform and its capabilities, and I’m excited to share my knowledge with you. I’ve worked out several training programs that can help you and your team get started with Fabric, or to deepen your knowledge of the platform.