Understanding Direct Lake v2.0 · Learn Microsoft Fabric

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Apr 28 • General

Understanding Direct Lake v2.0

Hey everyone, at FabCon 2025, Microsoft announced some updates/ extensions to the functionality of the Direct Lake semantic model storage mode. Some people are calling this Direct Lake 2.0 (but I think this is not the official terminology).

What's the difference? The original Direct Lake connects to the SQL Endpoint, and the new Direct Lake 2.0 connects directly to the Delta Tables. This has a number of benefits:

it allows you create Direct Lake semantic models with more than one source
it by-passes the SQL Endpoint (which can cause problems, with syncing issues etc)
I believe it was an essential step also for security/ access reasons, when they role out OneLake Security - it will allow you to propogate OneLake security definitions into the semantic model layer (without the need to redefine RLS/ CLS permissions etc in the semantic model).

You can learn more with this video from Data Mozart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0tgA_pYK1s

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