I’m Chris Finlan. I’m the product lead for Data Engineering and Data Science in Microsoft Fabric, including Spark.
I’ve spent a good chunk of my career working with customers, building products, and forming opinions about how technology should actually work. Some of those opinions are probably even correct.
I write about Fabric, Power BI, AI, and whatever else I happen to find interesting. Sometimes that’s a deep dive into something technical. Other times it’s the Eagles, an old movie, or something that has absolutely nothing to do with my day job.
There’s no real theme here beyond stuff I feel like writing about. Which, last I checked, was the entire point of having a personal blog.
A few things I’ve written
- Lakehouse or Warehouse in Fabric? — The architectural tradeoffs, with a reminder that the platform has evolved since the article was written.
- Fabric capacity management — A practical starting point for understanding and managing capacity.
- Warehouse + Spark interoperability — When the two engines should work together, and where the friction lives.
- Paginated reporting in Power BI — Because sometimes a good, old-fashioned report is exactly what you need.
Browse by topic
Microsoft Fabric · Apache Spark · Power BI · Paginated Reports · AI · The other stuff
Latest writing
- The Security Feature That’s Actually About Speed
- Your Fabric Spark Jobs Have Been Failing in Silence. That Just Changed.
- What “Upgrade your Synapse pipelines to Microsoft Fabric with confidence (Preview)” actually means for Fabric Spark teams in production
- Fabric notebook resources in Git give Spark teams a real release boundary
- What the February 2026 gateway release really means for Fabric Spark teams
- Bulk Import and Export Item Definitions Are the Fabric APIs Ops Teams Needed
Browse the full archive or read a little more about me.
I work at Microsoft (#MSFTEmployee). The opinions here are mine, not official Microsoft guidance.
