| The Data Warehousing Choice Each time I compile and curate the Database Weekly newsletter, I find lots of Fabric content from the various sources I watch to compose the newsletter. Since I primarily deal with the Microsoft Data Platform stack, this makes sense. Most of the things I am interested in are related to Microsoft, and as a result, I tend to use sources that also use SQL Server, Power BI, Fabric, and related technologies. I do look for other related data items, but I am heavily MSSQL focused. Recently, I stumbled on a piece that contains Fabric Alternatives in AWS, GCP, and OCI. It covers some of the options on these cloud platforms at a very high level. A product name and short description, but it shows there are other choices. I found it interesting that Databricks is mentioned, but not Snowflake. I'm not sure why that is, as Databricks is on Azure (and other platforms) as is Snowflake, but perhaps the author doesn't consider Snowflake a peer? That seems strange. I don't have a lot of customers using Fabric, but when I work with SQL Server heavy clients, they always ask my opinion on Fabric. Microsoft has devoted a lot of resources (engineering and marketing) to Fabric, and that has many customers considering Fabric for a data warehouse. However, my view is still that Fabric is an incomplete system and unfinished (from an engineering view) platform. I would still be hesitant to adopt it, especially after some high-profile outages. AWS has several warehousing options, and I find a number of customers using Databricks or Snowflake as their main warehousing options if they have left on-premises platforms. Both of these seem fairly mature, well understood with lots of documentation, examples in online articles, and plenty of staff that can work on these systems. If I were thinking about a data warehousing system separate from my OLTP SQL Server (on-prem, Azure SQL, MI) database, I'd look at one of these. Those of you reading this are likely in the Microsoft space, so do you feel the same way? Or have you bought into the Fabric marketing? Microsoft is spending a lot of money there, and even adding a SQL Database to the platform. Microsoft clearly thinks they can compete with these other options (Databricks and Snowflake). Do you? Steve Jones - SSC Editor Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
