Upskilling from Power BI to Synapse? 🏋️‍♀️

I’m often asked about how to transition from Power BI to Synapse—Here’s my simple 7 step guide to do just that.

𝟭. 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗯 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗗𝗣-𝟱𝟬𝟬

As a starter I would focus on the DP-500 certification. Not because the certification itself is a must-have but because the content bridges advanced Power BI with back-end Data Platform content—so it’s a good curriculum for the purpose.

𝟮. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴

Secondly, start learning about data modelling and data warehouse design. You can learn alot of this from within Power BI by studying proper star schema designing, add concepts like surrogate keys, merge normalize, denormalize, pivot and unpivot.

𝟯. 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝘂𝗽

Thirdly, find a mentor that made that transition from Power BI to Azure Synapse—Alternatively find someone strong in Data Warehouse Development.

𝟰. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱, 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁

Finally, start experimenting with Azure. There are options to sign up for free credits and if you start out cost concious you should be able to go far on those 200 USD.

You employer may be able to help after that—I would enquire them today if they can set up an Azure playground/sandbox in the form of an Azure subscription or resource group dedicated for you.

𝟱. 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴

Finally after playing around you may want to look into doing the DP-203 certification—this is around the same time you’d want to look for an employer where you can start working with ADF, Synapse and Azure in general on a reguler basis.

𝟲. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲

There are multiple path to go, but for now you just succeeded with a major upskilling and transition endeavor—you owe yourself some slack and to stabilize yourself and get comfortable with working with these new technologies.

𝟳. 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘂𝘁

Thereafter you can go multiple routes, but learning modern data engineering principles, Databricks and Python programming would not be a bad route to go.

𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽

Nikola Ilic made some great free and paid content for DP-500 that covers Power BI and Synapse and beyond—great starting point!

Ralph Kimball laid the foundation of many of the principles of which we design Data Warehouses today, so I highly recommend purchasing “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” (1st book is a must, 2 and 3 are Nice-to-have’s)