Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 340-341

Maximize efficiency in your data-driven projects by leveraging AI and Copilot technologies.

In the Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Fabric study, the composite organization based on data from four companies using Fabric showed an increase in data engineer and data scientist productivity of up to 50%, plus a 15% increase in business analyst productivity.

In this workshop, we will explore the transformative potential of various copilots, AI services within Microsoft Fabric. It covers live demos and hands on experience on Microsoft Fabric Copilots, AI Skills, Fabric integration with AI and GenAI services.

Participants will thoroughly explore the Copilot maturity framework and learn strategies to overcome adoption challenges, enabling customers to maximize the benefits of Copilots.

Wednesday 8:30 AM - 9:40 AM · Room 345-346

Real-Time Intelligence: Turning Streaming Data into Smart Decisions

In today’s fast-paced world, making smart, data-driven decisions in real time is essential for maintaining efficiency and quality in business operations. Join us to explore Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence and discover how to seamlessly ingest, analyze, and act on real-time data. Learn how to:

1. Ingest real-time data from multiple sources into Fabric
2. Run lightning-fast queries for instant insights
3. Monitor key metrics with intuitive, real-time dashboards
4. Set up automated alerts and detect anomalies for proactive issue resolution
5. Leverage Copilot in Real-Time Intelligence to query data using natural language

Wednesday 8:30 AM - 9:40 AM · Room 347

How much SQL do you need to know as developer?

In today’s data-driven world, developers must accurately utilize SQL and database functionalities to provide effective and cost-efficient solutions. This presentation covers key database skills for developers at all levels, focusing on design, querying, and optimization.

The topics are categorized by developer levels (Jr, Sr, Ld). We will begin with fundamental topics, such as using the correct data types, and progress to advanced topics, including vectors and artificial intelligence.

We will utilize SQL Server, one of the most commonly used databases globally. By knowing how to use this well-known server, you automatically qualify for numerous projects. Though many database engines have similar functionalities, they use different terms, so everything learned in this session will apply to other database systems you encounter.

How many new technologies will remain next year is uncertain, but SQL has been essential for decades. Mastering SQL can give you a significant competitive advantage!

Wednesday 8:30 AM - 9:40 AM · Room 348

Infrastructure for Data Professionals: An Introduction

It doesn’t matter if you are a Junior DBA, an accidental DBA or all the way up to a Senior DBA, the infrastructure your SQL Server environment runs on is important. Many among the DBA community came in as developers or perhaps directly into database administration roles it is equally possible that you have been out of the operations world long enough to have fallen out of the loop with what is happening. This session is intended to provide a full stack infrastructure overview so that you can talk shop with your cohorts in operations to resolve issues and maybe even be proactive. We will discuss, in an introductory fashion, hardware, network, storage, virtualization and operating system layers. Additionally, some suggestions as to where to find more information will be provided.

Wednesday 9:40 AM - 10:20 AM · Ask the Experts Booth in Expo Hall

Ask the Experts - 1

Stop by the Ask the Experts booth in the Expo Hall to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts - our speakers! Participants can sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.

Wednesday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 425

Roundtable Discussion - SQL Server Performance Tuning

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Wednesday 12:40 PM - 1:50 PM · Ballroom 2

Innovate without limits with Azure Data

AI is only as effective as its data. As organizations build the next generation of intelligent applications, they need the ability to innovate without limits with databases built with AI, for AI, and at any scale. Join CVP Shireesh Thota to learn how to scale innovation faster, with greater performance, and with greater security with Azure's suite of data services, including Fabric, Azure SQL and SQL Server 2025.

Wednesday 12:50 PM - 1:50 PM · Ask the Experts Booth in Expo Hall

Ask the Experts - 2

Stop by the Ask the Experts booth in the Expo Hall to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts - our speakers! Participants can sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.

Wednesday 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM · Solution Studio

Metric Insights: Insights Optimization Platform

Join us to discover how Metric Insights, the leader in Business Intelligence Governance and Optimization, can transform your organization’s BI landscape. Our Insights Optimization Platform tackles the challenges of complex BI environments with three powerful solutions: BI Optimizer, which eliminates redundant reports to reduce costs; BI Portal, a centralized hub for managing all BI assets regardless of source; and BI Marketplace, empowering analysts to discover and access trusted data assets. By cutting through BI sprawl and highlighting only relevant, high-quality content, Metric Insights makes it easier for business users to find and trust the information they need, leading to increased adoption of your BI investments and better business outcomes.

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 320-321

Everything you need to know about Data Virtualization in Azure SQL Database

Learn everything you need to know about Data Virtualization, OPENROWSET, External tables, parquet, Delta, best practices, how to access external data using Azure SQL Database, export cold data, and create your very own data tiering solution.

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 347

Worst code ever! Reviewing real-world examples that mandated refactoring.

This session looks at SQL Code that couldn't be tuned without a rewrite, working through why it was bad, why the optimizer couldn't deal with it appropriately, and what needed to be done to fix it.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 340-341

How to Pitch Fabric to your Leadership

While executives are familiar with Power BI's impact on business intelligence, many remain unaware of how Microsoft Fabric revolutionizes the entire data value chain. This session bridges that knowledge gap, equipping data leaders with practical strategies to transform Fabric from "just another BI tool" into a compelling platform for enterprise-wide data transformation. Learn how to build a clear, staged roadmap that starts with familiar Power BI territory and progressively demonstrates Fabric's game-changing capabilities in data integration, lakehouse architecture, and real-time analytics. Through real-world case studies, you'll see how leading organizations have successfully expanded from departmental BI to enterprise-wide data transformation using Fabric's unified platform. We'll explore how to identify and prioritize quick wins that build momentum while laying the foundation for broader adoption. You'll learn effective techniques for quantifying ROI at each stage of implementation, addressing security and governance concerns, and managing organizational change from your existing data stack to Fabric's modern architecture. Whether you're just starting to evaluate Fabric or looking to accelerate adoption, you'll leave with a practical blueprint for moving your organization beyond Power BI into the full potential of Microsoft's unified data platform.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 425

Roundtable Discussion - Leveraging your data with Power BI and Microsoft Fabric

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Thursday 12:40 PM - 1:50 PM · Room 425

Roundtable Discussion - Accelerate building ISV solutions using Microsoft Fabric and AI

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 442

Cleaning Up the BI Mess: A Roadmap to Effective Reporting Governance

When it comes to BI Governance, everyone talks a good game, but very few deliver the goods. Instead, most organizations present their users with reporting systems that are littered with obsolete, duplicative, and unused reports. BI analysts waste countless hours building reports that overlap with existing content, and everyone becomes frustrated by the lack of BI usage due to ineffective reporting governance. In this webinar, we will present a roadmap for cleaning up this mess to create an effectively governed reporting ecosystem. You will learn:

1. Why most governance efforts are half-measures, doomed to failure
2. The key steps to cleaning up your BI Environment
3. Example ways to govern your reporting portfolio:

• Identifying report duplicates
• Removing obsolete and overlapping reporting
• Publishing clean reporting in a catalog enriched with metadata
• Alerting report creators when they create new reports that appear to duplicate existing reporting

Thursday 3:10 PM - 4:00 PM · Ask the Experts Booth in Expo Hall

Ask the Experts - 7

Stop by the Ask the Experts booth in the Expo Hall to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts - our speakers! Participants can sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 340-341

Delivering a Scalable, Secure Data & AI Platform

AI isn’t magic—it’s powered by data. But most organizations struggle to make that data usable, scalable, and secure enough to activate real AI value. This session explores how to design and implement a modern data platform that enables AI across both structured and unstructured data types.

We’ll break down best practices for architecting data estates that are flexible, governed, and AI-ready—leveraging Microsoft Fabric and Azure as reference platforms. Whether you're operating in a single cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud environment, the principles and approaches shared are broadly applicable and grounded in real-world use cases.

By the end of this session, you’ll walk away with a blueprint for activating AI in your business, while maintaining enterprise-grade scale, security, and performance.

Key Takeaways • Design a future-ready data foundation that scales securely across structured and unstructured data for AI activation. • Leverage Microsoft Fabric and Azure to unify data, simplify governance, and accelerate time-to-insight. • Apply proven best practices to implement a scalable, secure, and AI-ready platform—regardless of your cloud environment.

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 344

SSMS 21 Spotlight: What's new and why it matters

With the Preview 1 release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 in November, the SQL Tools team made available the biggest set of updates to SSMS in recent memory, including numerous requests that customers have been waiting to see...for years in some cases.

In this session we'll show off what's new in SSMS 21, what's in progress, and what we have planned for SQL 2025. We'll start by walking through installation and jump to the first step for each launch - connecting. You'll want to connect to a database using our new connection dialog - we'll take a tour through the experience and take feedback (we're always listening :) We'll also cover updates you'll find throughout SSMS such as changes to Azure authentication, and improvements in the query editor and results grid. Folks have been excited about support for Git in SSMS, so we'll show you how to get started. If Git is new to you, it may seem daunting. Don't worry, if we can figure it out, so can you!

Expect lots of demos, as many tips, tricks, and updates as we can fit in.

Thursday 5:20 PM - 6:30 PM · Ballroom 2

Ask Microsoft Anything

It’s time for an Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA). Got a burning question you just can't yet find an answer to? This AMA is to be a lively live hour of Q&A - to ask questions and voice feedback - direct to the product teams across Microsoft. It will be an evening well spent—a mix of tech talk, laughter, and a dash of insider knowledge.

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room 425

Roundtable Discussion - Agentic AI - No code, low code and Pro code - Microsoft Fabric + AI better t

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 348

Microsoft Database Docs - Learn about Contributing for your Career

Join content developers from the Microsoft Database Docs content team for an interactive discussion and call to action on modern Microsoft docs. Learn about the Docs publishing process in GitHub, and the best ways to add content and fixes to Docs that are read by the entire customer community. We'll also ask for your feedback on Docs and host Q&A. Learn what contribution to Microsoft Learn can mean for your Microsoft MVP status, your career, or your personal brand.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 323-324

Roundtable Discussion - Microsoft Fabric Real Time Intelligence

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 425

Roundtable Discussion - Theater Techniques to Improve your Presentations

Join us for an engaging and informal gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Roundtable Discussions are a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences with other attendees. Pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights!