Alan Morrison describes the history of three concepts:
By 2014, SAP was using “in-memory data fabric” to describe a virtual data warehouse, a key element of its HANA “360-degree customer view” product line. Gartner for its part uses the term “data fabric” to this day as an all-encompassing means of heterogeneous data integration. From a 2021 post on data fabric architecture:
Read on for a high-level discussion of what each is and how it fits into the context of data warehouses and data lakes.