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Category: Microsoft Fabric

Testing the Performance of Direct Lake vs Import Mode for Semantic Models

Published 2026-01-30 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers performs some testing:

In this blog post I am going to show you how I completed the automated testing and then the results where I am going to compare Direct Lake, Import and DirectQuery and which one appears to be the best.

As always, your testing may very or be different to my tests below.

I would highly recommend that you use the method I have used and apply this testing technique to your data to understand and validate which semantic model would be best for your capacity.

Click through for details on the tests, query durations, and how the three major modes of data loading into Microsoft Fabric semantic models (Import, Direct Lake, Direct Query) fare.

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Setting up Azure SQL Mirroring to Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt troubleshoots an issue:

When setting up database mirroring from Azure SQL to Microsoft Fabric for one of my demo databases, I ran into an issue while trying to connect to my Azure SQL database.

As you can see in the screenshot above, it seems that a setting on my logical SQL Server in Azure is misconfigured. Let’s resolve that in a couple of steps.

Click through for the screenshot, the specific error, and how Olivier was able to get things working.

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Materialized Lake Views in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Lunn digs into a somewhat-new feature:

So first off, what are they? They are basically a table object that is based on a query. (Yes I know they are called ‘Views’… more on that later) So like a view, it is defined by a SQL query, but it doesn’t just sit over tables and runs that SQL when you query that view. What it does do is take the ‘View’ SQL query that defines the Materialised Lake Views, runs it and stores the query result data into a delta table. So when you query that view, you get the data from that object, and not the underlying tables. Neat! Save a bit on computing query time!

Read on to learn more about what they are, how they work, and when they can be useful.

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Workspace-Level Surge Protection Controls in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Pankaj Arora announces a new preview feature:

Until now, surge protection applied only at the capacity level—meaning all workspaces shared the same rules.

What’s new: workspace-level surge protection

We’re taking surge protection to the next level with workspace-level controls. This update gives you more granular management of compute usage across your organization.

Read on to see what this means for organizations using Microsoft Fabric.

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Using Variable Libraries in Lakehouse Shortcuts

Published 2026-01-27 by Kevin Feasel

Laura Graham-Brown continues a series on variable libraries in Microsoft Fabric:

Lakehouse shortcuts are a popular addition to the Fabric set of tools to access data easily without copying it. Using a variable library in lakehouse shortcuts means its easy to point shortcuts to an alternative location. This great for ALM using development, test and production workspaces.

Read on to see how it all works.

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Granular REST API Support for OneLake Security Role Management

Published 2026-01-23 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Merrill announces a new preview offering:

Microsoft Fabric continues to expand the OneLake security surface with new granular REST API support for role management, giving developers and platform teams far more control over how security policies are created, retrieved, and managed programmatically. In addition to the existing batch role API, Fabric now offers discrete Create, Get, and Delete role APIs, making it easier to build incremental, automation-friendly security workflows that align with modern DevOps and governance practices.

Click through for a quick explanation of how things did work and how they will work going forward.

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Improvements to Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Dashboards

Published 2026-01-22 by Kevin Feasel

Michal Bar makes an announcement:

Performance matters—especially when you’re exploring live data and making decisions in real time. We have released a set of improvements, all aiming to make Real-Time Dashboards faster, smoother, and more responsive, based directly on what our customers and community told us.

Read on to see what has changed.

What hasn’t changed is my complaint about the term “real-time.” But let’s be honest: I realize it’s a war I’m not going to win.

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Microsoft Fabric Copy Job Updates

Published 2026-01-21 by Kevin Feasel

Ye Xu lays out some changes:

This update introduces several enhancements to native incremental copy and change data capture (CDC) capabilities in Copy job, including support for additional data source stores for incremental copy, expanded CDC support for SAP Datasphere Outbound for Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage (in addition to Microsoft Cloud Storage), and Column Mapping support for CDC in Copy job.

Click through to see what has changed in the copy job.

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The Analyst Engineer Role in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-01-16 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley describes a job role:

Analytics Engineer – The DP-600 exam contains elements of both data analytics and data engineering with a business focus. It is the fence-sitter between the disciplined worlds of data engineering and the abstract creativity of analytics. An Analytics Engineer bridges data engineering and analytics by building enterprise-ready solutions in Microsoft Fabric. Combines skills in SQL, DAX, and KQL with expertise in data modeling and performance optimization. They design and manage dataflows, create semantic models, optimize datasets, and ensure governance to deliver curated, analytics-ready data assets for reporting and analysis.

Read on to see how this role fits and some of the things a person performing this role should know and be able to do.

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