The Future of Data

Proposed session for SQLBits 2026

TL; DR

Join this panel discussion on the future of data. Explore trends, real-world impacts, and governance, with audience questions driving an interactive, forward-looking discussion.

Session Details

The future of data is being shaped by rapid advances in platforms, AI, governance, and how organizations make decisions. In this panel discussion, Mathias Halkjær will interview a group of experienced data professionals to explore where the data world is heading next. The conversation will cover emerging trends, real-world implications, and differing perspectives on what lies ahead. The session will be highly interactive, with plenty of room for audience questions and discussion, making it a dynamic and engaging look at the future of data—from both the stage and the room.

3 things you'll get out of this session

- Hear insights from top data professionals on emerging trends and the future of data - Explore real-world implications of platforms, AI, and data governance - Engage directly through audience questions in a dynamic, interactive discussion

Mathias Halkjaer's other proposed sessions for 2026

Beware! SQL Injection through ADF/Pipelines - 2026

Fabric Data Agents and beyond - 2026

Ingesting API data with Python Notebooks - 2026

Navigating Data Modeling in Direct Lake - 2026

Vibecoding examples for data professionals - 2026

Vibe-coding for the data professional - 2026

When data lies - typical patterns for manipulating data - 2026

Mathias Halkjaer's previous sessions

Nose-Dive Narratives: Slide Karaoke 2024

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A deep dive into Direct Lake

The new Direct Lake storage mode in Power BI promises to revolutionize data handling by blending the real-time nature of DirectQuery and the high performance of Import mode. Is this all just hype, or does Direct Lake truly deliver on these claims?

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After this session, you will be able to conceptualize and implement different Power BI refresh scheduling patterns in ADF/Synapse. You’ll learn what limitations in Power BI you can overcome with an “external” orchestration tool as well as the different building blocks available. Finally, we will go through an example implementation as well as a step-by-step demo of how you can set this up yourself.

Supercharge Power BI with Azure Synapse Analytics

In this session we will cover how to architect an end-to-end enterpise analytics platform so that we utilize the best of both worlds. The extremely versatile ETL capabilities of Synapse and the powerful data modelling in Power BI.