Very interesting question

Very interesting question indeed. We were actually talking about this at work yesterday.

Yes, it would be very interesting to hear how you view MS Fabric - as a competitor or a possible architecture to implement TimeXtender in.
Maybe a bit of both.

Hi @Roy V, Great question!

Microsoft Fabric is definitely super exciting! They are presenting it as a more "integrated" SaaS offering of their existing analytics components such as Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, and PowerBI. 

But just like in 2019 when Microsoft announced Azure Synapse, it's primarily a rebranding of existing solutions with a just a few minor features added. 

Let's break it down:
Microsoft Fabric Homepage This is many of the tools that were available as part of the Azure Synapse workspace, but move outside of Azure. Likely, as a way to present it as a full Analyitcs SaaS solution rather than PaaS. 

OneLake is just Azure Data Lake Gen2 rebranded and with a few additional features like integrating Azure storage explorer into windows explorer. 

Lakehouse is Azure Synapse Serverless on top of Azure data lake gen2 as a way to better compete with DataBricks and Snowflake. 

Warehouse is Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL Pools rebranded once again. 

Power BI Datamarts are Power BI Premium data models. This of course, is just the next evolution of the beloved Analysis services. 

However, there are several things that Fabric still lacks when compared to TimeXtender's Holistic solution. 

• Lack of holistic metadata management (end-to-end documentation and lineage). 
• Lack of automation - still requires deep knowledge in coding in SQL DataWarehouse, PowerQuery, & DAX
• Not being a complete stack
• Unclear price performance

TimeXtender, is the missing piece that gives customers the expected ROI, productivity, agility, robustness and risk reduction needed when using Microsoft Fabric. We are confident that TimeXtender will be able to integrat the various parts of Fabric, such as OneLake and Warehouses as Data Targets just like we can with the Azure equivilents. 

TimeXtender will simplify the overall tech stack with a more comprehensive and coherent solution that adds what's missing in Microsoft's infrastructure without creating a Frankenstack!

We will continue posting updates as we have more information about support for this new exciting technology, So Stay Tuned!

Thanks Joseph for your answer. I agree that most components already existed and have been rebranded although they do bring together the different components smoothly. But that still gives you a free format on how to do things where TimeXtender already has that solid infrastructure in place to work with the onderlying components. Good te read you are confident that an integration will come in TimeXtender as well to proper work with MS Fabric components. 

 

Wouldn’t it be great that TimeXtender could connect to the OneLake and generate code (stored procedures, views, functions, ...) in there, in such a way that the data warehouse becomes a lakehouse (and we no longer need a SQL database / Azure SQL DB) ? 
Is that an option TimeXtender is looking into ?

Hi @peter.jensen ,

that is basically the route using Synapse Serverless. You will always need some kind of engine to run the “code” be it SQL, pyspark, or other. 

@JTreadwell : are you sure OneLake is exactly ADLS Gen2? Because I have been hearing about performance upgrades to blob storage which Microsoft will/has released to also be able to speed up some of the other PaaS services.

Hey @rory.smith, in this Microsoft doc about Onelake it says it’s “built on top of ADLSgen2”.

Hi @JTreadwell ,

yeah - I have had some hints on performance boosts being worked on for a long time (blob storage also underpins Hyperscale and AAS and PBI Premium Capacity) and am trying to find out whether those are already there or still forthcoming. I suspect it is a bit of both as Microsoft seems to be shifting towards incremental improvement vs generational updates.