Fundamentals of Microsoft Fabric

Fundamentals of Microsoft Fabric

by Nikola Ilic, Ben Weissman
Released July 2025
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098172923

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Book description

In the rapidly evolving world of data and analytics, professionals face the challenge of navigating complex platforms in order to build more efficient solutions. Microsoft Fabric, hailed as Microsoft's "biggest data product in history after SQL Server," offers powerful capabilities but comes with a steep learning curve. The myriad of choices within Fabric can be overwhelming, with multiple ways to tackle tasks, not all of which are equally efficient.

This book serves as a definitive roadmap to understanding Microsoft Fabric—and how to leverage it to suit your needs. Authors Nikola Ilic and Ben Weissman demystify the core concepts and components necessary to build, manage, and administer robust data solutions within this game-changing product. By reading this book, you will:

  • Discover the core Microsoft Fabric components and understand key concepts and techniques for building a robust data platform
  • Learn to apply Microsoft Fabric effectively in your day-to-day job
  • Understand the concept of a lake-centric architecture
  • Gain the skills to implement a scalable and efficient end-to-and analytics solution
  • Manage and administer a Fabric tenant

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Table of contents

  1. Brief Table of Contents (Not Yet Final)
  2. 1. What Is Microsoft Fabric?
    1. The why and the what of Microsoft Fabric
    2. The Big Picture of Fabric
      1. Workspaces and Domains
    3. The Fabric Roadmap
      1. The Fabric Pricing Model
      2. Compute & Capacities
      3. Storage
      4. User Licenses
      5. Networking
      6. Regional Differences
    4. Summary
  3. 2. Getting Started with Microsoft Fabric
    1. Creating an Azure Account
    2. Enabling Fabric
    3. First steps with Fabric
      1. Building a Lakehouse
      2. Building a Warehouse
      3. Visualizing Fabric Data in Power BI
    4. Summary
  4. 3. All Roads Lead to OneLake
    1. Overview of Data Lakes
    2. Evolution of Data Storage Solutions
    3. The Importance of Data Lakes in Modern Data-Driven Businesses
    4. Introduction to OneLake
      1. Separation of Compute and Storage
      2. File Explorer
      3. Unique Selling Points and Differentiation from Other Data Lakes
    5. The Foundation of OneLake
      1. Delta and Iceberg Format
      2. Interoperability
      3. Scalability and Performance
      4. Data Stored in OneLake
      5. Metadata
      6. Notebooks and Analytical Artifacts
    6. Organizing Data in OneLake – Domains and Workspaces
      1. Domains
      2. Workspaces
      3. Key Differences Between Domains and Workspaces
    7. Ingesting Data to and integrating with OneLake
      1. Methods of Data Ingestion into OneLake
      2. Integration Mechanisms with OneLake
    8. Conclusion
  5. 4. Data Science in Microsoft Fabric
    1. MLFlow
      1. Experimentation tracking for sales forecasting
      2. Deploying models as REST APIs to support non-technical teams
      3. Managing model versions
    2. SynapseML
    3. AutoML
    4. Semantic Link
      1. Visualize dependencies in the semantic model
      2. Optimize semantic models with Best Practice Analyzer rules
      3. Translate semantic models
      4. Migrate existing semantic models to Direct Lake
      5. Augment the gold layer
    5. Summary
  6. 5. Power BI
    1. Power BI Workloads in the Pre-Fabric Era
      1. Import mode for blazing-fast performance
      2. DirectQuery mode for real-time reporting
    2. Power BI workloads in Microsoft Fabric
      1. Understanding Direct Lake mode
      2. Direct Lake key concepts
    3. Summary
  7. About the Authors

Product information

  • Title: Fundamentals of Microsoft Fabric
  • Author(s): Nikola Ilic, Ben Weissman
  • Release date: July 2025
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098172923