Data Analytics
Microsoft Fabric
One platform carrying the analytics chain from ingestion to dashboard, on OneLake as a single copy of the data.
Product
Microsoft FabricMicrosoft Fabric covers the whole analytics chain on one platform, with OneLake as the unified storage foundation holding a single copy of the data. Data Factory carries ingestion pipelines and integration, Data Engineering provides the lakehouse with Spark and notebooks, Data Warehouse provides the managed SQL warehouse, Database provides native operational storage, and Power BI provides integrated visualisation. Real-Time Intelligence for streaming and intraday analytics, and Data Science for machine learning and advanced analytics, are available on the same platform and both require a Microsoft Fabric licence or capacity. The estate is layered in the medallion pattern: Bronze for raw data, Silver for validated data, and Gold for the enriched data reporting reads.
How it works
- Source systems are connected through Data Factory pipelines, so ingestion and ETL run to a schedule rather than as a manual export.
- Data lands in OneLake as a single copy, so the lakehouse, the warehouse, and the reporting layer read the same storage instead of each holding its own extract.
- Data Engineering builds the medallion layers with Spark and notebooks: Bronze raw, Silver validated, Gold enriched.
- Data Warehouse holds the managed SQL warehouse, and Database provides native operational storage where a workload needs it.
- The semantic model and its measures are built on the Gold layer and published to Power BI, which is part of the platform rather than attached to it.
- Real-Time Intelligence and Data Science are added where the requirement calls for them, and the Microsoft Fabric licence or capacity they require is agreed before the design assumes them.
- Workspaces, access, and the refresh schedule are handed to the team that will operate the platform.
A problem it solves
Figures sit in an ERP, in several operational databases, and in a stack of spreadsheets, so a monthly report is assembled by hand and each department arrives at the meeting with a different number. Microsoft Fabric carries those sources through one ingestion path into one storage layer, so the warehouse, the semantic model, and the dashboard read the same data and the report refreshes on schedule instead of being rebuilt.