The Bit Bucket

I had the pleasure of recording a new PG Down Under podcast today. It was great to have Charles Feddersen from Microsoft back on the show.

Charles is the Partner Director of Product Management, Postgres & MySQL on Azure at Microsoft.

He leads the product management teams for the Postgres and MySQL managed services on Azure including Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL, and Azure HorizonDB, which is why I wanted to talk to him today.

2026-07-23

In Activator, rules are the core element that make automation possible. A rule defines the condition you want the system to look for in your data — the point at which something should happen.

Rules can be simple or complex.

A simple example might be: temperature > 90°C or error rate exceeds 5%. These are fixed thresholds — clear, measurable values that indicate when a limit has been crossed.

2026-07-22

I recently received a review copy of Python Data Analysis: Master Python Analytics with Machine Learning, Deep Learning, GenAI, LLMs, and Data Engineering by Avinash Navlani and Cornellius Yudha Wijaya from my friends at PackT. This is the fourth edition of this book.

Authors

Avinash Navlani is a senior data scientist, researcher, and educator with a PhD in data science and many years in both the industry and in academia.

Cornellius Yudha Wijaya is a data science manager leading AI initiatives and driving the development of practical data and AI solutions.

2026-07-21

Before you start creating rules in Activator, it’s important to understand how the system models data conceptually — using Objects and Signals.

An Object in Activator represents a real-world entity that you want to monitor — for example, a sensor, a customer account, a store, or a device.

Each Object has one or more Signals, which are the measurable data points associated with it. For example, a device object might have signals like temperature, battery level, and status.

2026-07-20

If I want accounting advice, it’s unlikely that I’d ask my dentist for that advice.

Accountants and IT

Many years ago, I created applications for food wholesalers. When the owners of these businesses decided to get a new or better computing system, invariably they’d speak to their accountants. I understand the reasons why that might seem logical to them at first, but what I saw when these clients did this, is that they invariably ended up with the wrong systems.

2026-07-19

Fabric Activator is the part of Microsoft Fabric that connects real-time insights with automated actions — it’s what makes analytics operational.

At its core, Activator is a no-code service that continuously monitors incoming data from Eventstreams or from KQL queries running on KQL Databases.

It looks for specific conditions that you define — things like a metric crossing a threshold, an anomaly appearing in a time series, or a custom pattern detected across multiple events.

2026-07-18

Just after I was born, my mother and father called me Gregory. Ever since then, everyone has called me Greg. And that included my parents. To the day she died, my mother called me Greg and so did my dad while he was alive (miss you both).

I have friends who tell me that the only time their mothers used their full names was when they were in trouble for some reason.

2026-07-17

The Digital Twin Builder in Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence is a design surface for representing real-world systems as manageable, structured entities inside Fabric.

A digital twin is essentially a logical model of something in the real world—such as a device, customer, room, vehicle, or any other object that produces events or has measurable state. The new builder allows you to define these entities directly within the Fabric experience without requiring a separate digital twin service.

2026-07-16

I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that I’m not a fan of ORMs. What I’m even less of a fan of is code-first design, particularly in combination with an ORM like the Entity Framework.

It might seem cool and shiny and if you are just whipping up a small proof of concept or test app, please feel free to do it, but the minute you think of doing it for enterprise systems, please just don’t. And if you have colleagues wanting to do this, just say no.

2026-07-15

Fabric Maps allow you to visualize spatial data as it changes in real time. When integrated with Real-Time Intelligence, you can stream live data directly from Eventstreams or query current states from KQL databases.

Each map layer can represent different metrics — such as sensor status, delivery vehicle locations, or regional anomalies — updated continuously as new events arrive.

You can also apply time slicers and filters to replay historical activity, helping to analyze event sequences over time.

2026-07-14