Declarative Visualization with DENEB | Daten-WG Podcast with Daniel Marsh-Patrick

Daniel Marsh-Patrick joins from down under to talk about Deneb, the certified Power BI custom visual that turns Vega and Vega-Lite into a sandbox for almost any visual you can imagine. We dig into declarative vs. imperative visualization, why Deneb is a side project he has been carrying for five years, what PBIR and the new JSON report format mean for visual developers, why Vega is unusually LLM-friendly, and where Deneb really shines: the engineering, environmental, and "non-business" charts that Power BI core visuals were never built for. If you want to level up your visuals with Deneb - this is for you! Daniel Marsh-Patrick   / daniel-m-p   Artur König:   / datakoenigartur   00:00 – Intro: An international expert episode with Daniel from down under 02:55 – Daniel's path into Power BI visuals: Vega and Vega-Lite explained 05:13 – BI developer learning to be a web developer 07:02 – Custom visuals, certification, and why proprietary visuals are tricky 09:09 – Why Deneb exists: certified custom visuals without the AppSource listing 10:49 – A side project for the community: five years of Deneb 12:59 – Declarative vs. imperative: why JSON beats coding every pixel 14:14 – PBIR and the new JSON report format for Power BI 17:32 – The big performance refactor and documenting Deneb's property structure 20:47 – Self-confessed non-coders build the most mind-blowing Deneb visuals 23:16 – Shoutouts to Kerry Kolosko and Ben Ferry 25:41 – Performance, interactivity, and the slow grind of community-driven roadmaps 26:44 – Vega and AI: why LLMs love declarative visuals 28:30 – Vega is everywhere: Looker Studio, Databricks, Microsoft research 30:30 – Why Deneb cannot have Copilot inside (and why it is not really a problem) 33:00 – Portability: copy a Vega spec from Databricks straight into Power BI 35:00 – When to reach for Deneb instead of stacking 28 measures for an IBCS bar chart 36:40 – Beyond sales and finance: engineering and environmental visuals 40:30 – Can I really maintain this? The third-party visual trade-off 42:00 – The world is broader than your next sales report 42:50 – Outro: Power BI & Fabric Summit and a shoutout to Reza Rad 44:00 – Difinity Conference and the open source spirit 45:11 – New Deneb release on the way with major performance improvements Links and sources Deneb documentation: https://deneb-viz.github.io/ Deneb on AppSource: https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-... Vega: https://vega.github.io/vega/ Vega-Lite: https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ Vega online editor: https://vega.github.io/editor/ Kerry Kolosko: https://kerrykolosko.com/ Ben Ferry – Power BI Ferry Tales:    / @powerbiferrytales   Microsoft Research – Data Formulator: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/resea... IBCS: https://www.ibcs.com/ Power BI & Fabric Summit: https://globalpowerbisummit.com/ visit this one too: Daten-WG: https://www.daten-wg.com/daten-wg-2026/ [DE]