We are really good at getting stuck in our technology silos and only focusing on what’s happening in “our “world.
In Power Platform, who can blame us? We get new, exciting, sometimes infuriating updates almost weekly, and almost every sentence begins with Co-Pilot or Gen AI. Still, once in a while, it’s worth coming up for air and looking at the rest of the ecosystem around us to see what’s happening.
I was recently challenged by my good friend Laura Graham Brown to help teach a Fabric workshop, and that’s precisely what I needed to get out of my silo and take in the landscape that was changing in and around Power Platform without us noticing.
So what is Microsoft Fabric anyway?
It is essentially Low Code for Data, in the same way the Power Platform is low-code for app and automation development. Most of the key components have been with us some time, like Power BI, Data factory and Synapse Analytics, but they all have had a nice make over to make them easier to use, and more importantly, work togther naturally.
So whats new.
One Lake is probably the most obvious, changing from the traditional Microsoft data lake model, to more of a Onedrive for data. Instead of distinct lakes, we have one large shared “lake” which can now accept more formats of data. We still maintain the concept of workspaces from power BI to build and consume data and analytics in, in addition to the normal features we also get lake houses, & lake warehouses to hold unstructured and structured data, these are created as spaces to store and share data from.
Synapse Analytics gets some additional components , that are easier for non-coders to consure easpecially around real time data, this move to real time actions has brought Data Activator as well, although only just on preview, it will help create actions and alerts based on real time data , already excited to see how well that works on IOT data in factories etc.
There is a constant flavour of AI everywhere, but here to help with models, learning and analytics, but I am really interested to see where the One Security takes us and how that will link with the new security co-pilot and other security tools like Purview and Sentinel.
All very interesting but why in the world of power apps and automate should I care. Well there are inbuild links to dataverse, virtual tables, shared admin tools and potentially govenrnace . Amoungst this overlap with Power platform, I am going to showcase some of what is already there in public preview, how it works but as always talk about where the risks are.
This series on Fabric is going to talk about.:-
- Creating dataverse connections in Fabric / Power Platform Admin Center
- Dataverse links in Fabric, including changes to Azure Synapse Link
- Virtual tables from Fabric
- Building Apps and Automations with fabric
- Who can see my data now its in fabric
- So who Governs what?
Platform Guardian 