Browse All Machine Learning Content (254)

nelsontam introduces Microsoft’s MARS (Map Autoregressive) model on Microsoft Foundry and explains how it converts satellite imagery into GIS-ready vector map data. The post outlines an end-to-end workflow with Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro, including STAC/COG ingestion requirements and practical deployment settings for running geospatial feature extraction at scale.

Samantha Kubota introduces Echoverse, a set of high-fidelity synthetic “worlds” for training computer-use agents, and explains why depth (stateful workflows and database-grounded grading) matters more than sheer environment count. The post shares results from supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, plus links to released code and datasets.

John Savill rounds up a week of Azure platform updates, spanning AKS, networking, API Management, monitoring, data services, and regional expansion, plus a few notable AI model availability items and security-related changes like Azure Enclave and Key Vault symmetric keys.

diptiborkar summarizes why Microsoft Fabric and OneLake were recognized as a Leader in Forrester’s 2026 Data Lakehouses report, focusing on a unified lakehouse foundation for analytics and AI, open table formats, cross-cloud interoperability, and built-in governance and security across engines like Spark, SQL, KQL, and Power BI.

arindamc explains how Workspace Outbound Access Protection (OAP) in Microsoft Fabric controls outbound connectivity for Eventstream, so streaming pipelines can only read from approved sources and write to approved destinations (including cross-workspace routes) using data connection rules.

MattH_OneLake announces two Microsoft Fabric preview features that mirror Azure Monitor (Log Analytics) tables and AWS Glue Data Catalog-managed Apache Iceberg tables into OneLake. The post explains the zero-copy, metadata-based approach and outlines how to set up each mirroring source for analysis across Fabric workloads.

robece-msft outlines how to build event-driven applications in Microsoft Fabric using Business Events and User Data Functions, with code samples, architecture patterns, and practical scenarios aimed at teams building real-time, data-centric solutions.

Tzvia introduces Real-Time Dashboard in Microsoft Fabric, focusing on using streaming data to build live operational views that update in seconds so teams can spot spikes, slowdowns, and stalled processes quickly and respond while events are still unfolding.

ealroybrin introduces Microsoft Fabric Embed (Preview), which lets developers embed Fabric Real-Time Dashboards into JavaScript/TypeScript web apps using delegated Microsoft Entra ID authentication. The post outlines what the preview supports, key limitations (like no service principal auth), and how Fabric governance and permissions carry over to embedded experiences.

Santhosh_Ravin1 announces general availability of job concurrency and queue monitoring for Apache Spark in Microsoft Fabric, adding a capacity-level view to help diagnose why Spark jobs are queued or throttled and to understand how individual workspaces consume shared capacity over time.

Ilana Waitser introduces a preview capability that brings Azure Monitor telemetry into Microsoft Fabric so teams can connect operational signals (logs and metrics) with analytics workflows and understand business impact faster.

Ilana Waitser announces a public preview that lets you share Azure Monitor Logs from a Log Analytics workspace into Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake as Delta Parquet, without duplicating data. The post explains what this enables in Fabric—Power BI reporting, Spark-based analytics and ML, and correlating telemetry with business data for near real-time decisions.

Santhosh_Ravin1 announces that Microsoft Fabric now extends customer-managed key (CMK) encryption to the Spark processing layer, covering data that Spark jobs read, write, and temporarily stage on compute clusters—aimed at meeting stricter security and compliance expectations for key control during active processing.

murray-kp rounds up the July 2026 Microsoft Fabric updates across CI/CD and Git integration, OneLake governance, Spark runtime and diagnostics, lakehouse and warehouse features, and Real-Time Intelligence improvements including Eventstream security and new connectors.

Rafia Aqil outlines how to enable Azure Databricks’ Compliance Security Profile (CSP) for HIPAA workloads, including the September 1, 2026 deadline, required prerequisites like Azure VNet encryption and supported VM series, and a rollout approach to validate cluster startup and end-to-end connectivity before production.

fredguis outlines upcoming OneLake Security changes for Microsoft Fabric SQL analytics endpoints, focusing on enterprise-friendly access control. The update improves nested group resolution, shortcut-backed table behavior in hub-and-spoke lakehouse setups, more consistent column-level security with group-based access, and broader service principal support for automated and app-owned data products.

Matt Gordon and Anna Hoffman show how to set up anomaly detection in Microsoft Fabric using streaming change events from Azure SQL/SQL Server, then trigger alerts and actions with Fabric components like Eventstream, Eventhouse, and Activator.

aonelakeuser outlines summer updates to OneLake security in Microsoft Fabric, including broader engine coverage (Eventhouse and Fabric Graph), a simplified column-level security UI, faster Secure tab performance, a redesigned SQL Analytics Endpoint sync model, and generally available OneLake security APIs.

Nora Zhan introduces “Physical-World Intelligence” and explains how GeoAI combines geospatial data (weather, satellite imagery, sensors, and maps) with enterprise context and AI. The article outlines Microsoft Foundry’s geospatial model catalog, Planetary Computer Pro as a GeoAI data plane, and a GeoAI SDK for production-scale inference workflows.

Santhosh_Ravin1 explains how Microsoft Fabric Spark’s Native Execution Engine now accelerates CSV reads with a native, SIMD-optimized reader, improving common data engineering workloads without requiring code changes.

AmirJafari announces updates to Fabric data agents in Microsoft Foundry, focusing on simpler MCP-based connectivity, OneLake Catalog discovery, support for attaching multiple data agents to a single Foundry agent, and improved production troubleshooting via Foundry Observability traces and logs.

John Savill gives a very quick overview of Rayfin and Microsoft Fabric Apps, focusing on where they fit in the Fabric ecosystem and why they matter for analytics and data platform work.

John Savill gives a quick overview of Rayfin and Microsoft Fabric Apps, focusing on the problem they’re trying to solve, how the Fabric Apps data model works, and what app hosting looks like in practice, with a short demo and key takeaways.

mayurjain explains how the OpenAI Assistants API retirement on August 26, 2026 affects programmatic integrations with Microsoft Fabric Data Agents, and why Microsoft recommends moving to the Data Agent Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint instead of rebuilding directly on OpenAI’s Responses API.

robece-msft introduces the fundamentals of event-driven architecture in Microsoft Fabric, focusing on Real-Time Hub and how Fabric’s event capabilities help workloads react to meaningful business signals in real time.

This week's ML roundup focuses on the practical path from research ideas to systems you can ship. Microsoft open-sourced ML Video Codec (MLVC) with code, weights, and tooling for real-time deployment on commodity NPUs, while Fabric and SQL updates show clearer patterns for streaming fresh signals into ML enrichment and feature updates. On the platform side, OneLake and Lakehouse improvements reduce friction around query iteration, cross-platform table access, and tighter inbound controls. We close with lessons on scaling large training runs across AMD and NVIDIA via Foundry Managed Compute and a look at Microsoft IQ as a governance-first way to feed agents the right context.

Naba Kumar and the MLVC team announce the open-source release of MLVC, a learned video codec that replaces traditional codec primitives with end-to-end neural compression. The post shares bitrate savings versus H.264/H.265, real-time performance targets on commodity NPUs, and what’s included in the GitHub release (models, weights, training scripts, and conversion tooling).

arindamc explains how to build a real-time “row-to-intelligent-action” pipeline in Microsoft Fabric that captures shopping-cart signals via CDC, reshapes them into analytics-ready rows, and enriches each micro-batch with AI in a Spark Structured Streaming notebook to drive timely actions.

Steve Sweetman explains how AT&T built and scaled its telecom-focused OTel 2.0 models using Microsoft Foundry Managed Compute, combining open models from Hugging Face with AMD and NVIDIA GPU capacity to process around one trillion tokens while optimizing for cost, performance, and deployment speed.

HARMEETGILL announces the general availability of OneLake resource instance rules in Microsoft Fabric, explaining how workspace admins can allow secure service-to-service access from specific Azure resource instances (like Databricks or Azure SQL) without relying on broad IP allowlists or private networking everywhere.

Anna Hoffman introduces Change Event Streaming (CES) in public preview across Microsoft SQL, showing where it fits for modern, event-driven application scenarios and how it differs from approaches like CDC and mirroring in SQL Server 2025, Azure SQL, and Fabric SQL.

avinandac introduces the generally available Lakehouse Query Explorer in Microsoft Fabric, an in-context Spark SQL editor inside the Lakehouse explorer for quick data exploration, validation, and iteration, with guidance on when to switch to notebooks or the SQL analytics endpoint for more advanced workflows.

MattH_OneLake explains how Microsoft Fabric mirroring can surface Snowflake-managed Apache Iceberg tables in OneLake without copying data, by replicating Iceberg metadata via shortcuts and virtualizing the tables as Delta Lake so they can be queried across Fabric engines.

John Savill gives an overview of Microsoft IQ and how it’s meant to bring the right intelligence (enterprise data, web data, and model capabilities) to AI agents, including the different “IQ” surfaces (Work, Fabric, Foundry, Web) and the security/identity considerations around least privilege and protection.

This week focused on making ML systems easier to run in production, from securing outbound AI calls in SQL Server 2025 to tightening governance and cost visibility across OneLake. Fabric updates added storage tiering and reporting, plus clearer architecture patterns for building an AI-ready data foundation. On the real-time side, Eventstreams matured with stronger connectors, event-time processing, and practical CDC-to-action reference flows, while new guidance covered context-aware AI layers and safer automation patterns for calling Fabric REST APIs.

olivialiu-micro explains how SQL Server 2025 enables governed outbound calls to external AI services while keeping control inside the database security model, including permissions, enablement switches, authentication options, and built-in auditing for REST invocation and external model objects.

Rafia Aqil explains Microsoft’s IQ Platform (Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ) and how it adds business and organizational context to AI systems. The post breaks down Fabric’s OneLake-based data layer, ontology-driven meaning, and Foundry IQ’s managed services for RAG, memory, ranking, and citations.

Mabasile_MSFT announces general availability of OneLake Storage Tiers and Lifecycle Management in Microsoft Fabric, explaining how to keep frequently used data in the hot tier while automatically moving less-accessed data to cool or cold tiers to reduce long-term storage costs.

Mabasile_MSFT announces general availability of the OneLake storage report in Microsoft Fabric, which lets workspace admins generate an item-size breakdown of storage usage in a workspace, including visible, system, and soft-deleted data, plus billing status per item.

mk_sunitha explains a secure pattern for calling Microsoft Fabric REST APIs from User Data Functions (UDFs), using a service principal plus Azure Key Vault to keep secrets out of application code while still enabling governed automation like triggering Fabric pipelines and managing workspaces.