Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer AssociatePlan and implement data analytics solutions (10-15%)Medium
A global manufacturing company uses Microsoft Fabric to manage its supply chain data. They have a central Lakehouse and several regional Lakehouses, all within the same Fabric workspace. Data from regional Lakehouses needs to be aggregated into the central Lakehouse for global reporting. The company wants to avoid physically copying data and instead allow the central Lakehouse to directly access the regional data. Which feature should be implemented to achieve this?
- AConfiguring a Delta Live Table stream from regional to central Lakehouses.
- BEstablishing a direct database connection using a SQL endpoint.
- CCreating a OneLake shortcut from the central Lakehouse to the regional Lakehouses.
- DUsing a Data Pipeline to replicate data from regional to central Lakehouses.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Creating a OneLake shortcut from the central Lakehouse to the regional Lakehouses.
OneLake shortcuts allow a Lakehouse (or other Fabric items) to reference data located in another Lakehouse or external storage without physically copying it. This enables direct access and querying of regional data from the central Lakehouse, meeting the requirement to avoid data duplication.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Delta Live Tables are for building reliable, maintainable, and testable data pipelines on Databricks, not a native Fabric feature for cross-Lakehouse linking without copying.
- B. While SQL endpoints allow querying, they primarily work on data *within* the Lakehouse or Warehouse; they don't inherently create logical links to *other* Lakehouses' raw files without prior ingestion or shortcutting.
- D. A Data Pipeline would physically copy the data, which the requirement explicitly states to avoid.
OneLake Shortcuts
OneLake shortcuts are symbolic links that allow data stored in one location (e.g., another Lakehouse, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2) to be referenced and accessed as if it were local to the current Fabric item.
- Avoids data duplication.
- Enables cross-domain data sharing.
- Supports ADLS Gen2, Amazon S3, and other Fabric items.
Memory trick: Shortcuts link your Lakehouses, no copy needed.