Fabric vs Azure (ADF/Databricks/Synapse)

Sep '24 (edited) • General

Hello mates, I was taking a stab at comparing Fabric against the traditional Azure analytics set (ADF/Databricks/Synapse). Can you please add to this or correct what I have said?

Fabric Pros:

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> Unified & seamless interface as Fabric is Saas (managed/serverless. Decisions are taken for you)

vs Paas (need to manage /take more decisions)

> Future proof (Microsoft is heading towards Fabric)

> Task Flows to draw and implement architecture

> Semantic link - Semantic model can be used by Data Science.

> Domains to organize by business units, etc.

> Spark runtime in Notebook will spin up instantaneously vs 3 to 4 minutes in Synapse

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Fabric Cons:

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> Merge not allowed in Warehouse

> Only schedule trigger (no Tumbling window trigger, or other fancy triggers)

> Having to use traditional SHIR (Self Hosted Integration Runtime) instead of On-prem data gateway -as performance/compression and parameterization capability is weak (even though on-pre data gateway is GA - Generally Available - as of this week On-premises data gateway September 2024 Release | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI)

> OPENROWSET missing to query files using SQL on the fly. Fabric has shortcuts, but not equivalent to OPENROWSET.

Happy Learning!

Kaushik.

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