In this post I want to share my thoughts about some of the Microsoft Fabric CI/CD related announcements during FabCon. To clarify, when I say FabCon I mean the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. Which took place last week in Las Vegas.
In reality, there were a lot of great announcements during the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. To get a good idea of how many you can view Marc Reguera’s LinkedIn post. Where he shares a list of all the published blogs from FabCon.
I want to share my thoughts about some of the CI/CD related announcements in this post. Since the ones in this post are the ones that got my attention the most.
Microsoft Fabric Variable libraries
Microsoft Fabric Variable libraries were announced during the keynote at the Microsoft Fabric community conference. Which caused some excitement.
Variable libraries are an upcoming preview item that will enable developers to manage configurations within a workspace. Reducing the need for custom development work after deployments.
You will be able to achieve this by creating a Variable library in each workspace. From there, configure the individual variables for that workspace. Improving your CI/CD experience.
For example, you can specify the same variable with different data sources for Development, Test and Production workspaces. Like in the below diagram that shows how Data Pipelines can get values for different sources even though they specify the same variable.
It is worth noting that Variable libraries will come with APIs to automate management.
As you can imagine, this is going to make performing CI/CD easier for a lot of folks. According to the Fabric March 2025 Feature Summary Variable libraries are expected to arrive mid-April 2025. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for them.
Fabric-CLI
Another announcement that can impact your CI/CD deployments ongoing is the introduction of the Fabric Command Line Interface. Also known as Fabric CLI.
Fabric CLI allows you to perform a variety of tasks in your Microsoft Fabric tenant from the command line.
Even though the online documentation about the available commands are a bit scarce you can find some examples on the fabric-cli GitHub page.
Alternatively, you can log into Fabric through the CLI and then run help to view the commands. Note that the correct syntax for this is “fab –help”. Which currently returns the below results:
Work seamlessly with Fabric from the command line.
Usage: fab <command> <subcommand> [flags]
Core Commands:
assign : Assign a resource to a workspace.
cd : Change to the specified directory.
copy : Copy an item or file to a destination.
export : Export an item.
exists : Check if a workspace, item, or file exists.
get : Get a workspace or item property.
import : Import an item to create or modify it.
dir : List workspaces, items, and files.
mklink : Create a shortcut.
mkdir : Create a new workspace, item, or directory.
move : Move an item or file.
open : Open a workspace or item in the browser.
pwd : Print the current working directory.
del : Delete a workspace, item, or file. Use with caution.
set : Set a workspace or item property.
start : Start a resource.
stop : Stop a resource.
unassign : Unassign a resource from a workspace.
Resource Commands:
acl : Manage permissions [admin].
label : Manage sensitivity labels [admin].
job : Manage tasks and jobs.
table : Manage tables.
Util Commands:
api : Make an authenticated API request.
auth : Authenticate fab with Fabric.
config : Manage configuration settings.
desc : Show commands supported by each Fabric element or path.
Flags:
--help : Show help for command.
--version: Show version.
Learn More:
Use `fab <command> <subcommand> --help` for more information about a command.
Use `fab config set mode interactive` to enable interactive mode.
Read the docs at https://aka.ms/fabric-cli.
Microsoft Fabric CI/CD possibilities with Fabric-CLI
During the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference Rui Romano introduced his fabric-cli-powerbi-cicd-sample GitHub repository. Which shows a Microsoft Fabric CI/CD scenario working with the Fabric CLI and GitHub.
One thing that I find interesting is that fabric-cicd was announced recently and others are looking to work with the Fabric CLI instead. I suspect this is due to differences in capabilities.
For those who wish to compare, I covered how to operationalize fabric-cicd to work with Microsoft Fabric and YAML Pipelines in my previous post.
With this new option to perform CI/CD it will be interesting to see what happens with the CI/CD landscape ongoing.
Extended support for service principals
Extended support for service principals was also announced during the keynote. What this means is that service principals will be supported with both Deployment pipeline APIs and GitHub when working with the existing Git APIs.
To clarify, the GitHub support for service principals is only through Git APIs and not any new GitHub specific APIs. For example, when looking to work with the commit to Git API.
Service principal support has been a hot topic for some time now. So this update is most welcomed.
Terraform Provider for Microsoft Fabric now GA
Another CI/CD related announcement was the fact that the Terraform Provider for Microsoft Fabric is now generally available (GA).
For those of you who are not aware, Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code tool developed by HashiCorp.
In the context of Microsoft Fabric, the Terraform provider allows you to manage environments and resources with Infrastructure as Code.
One advantage of this is that Terraform can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines. For example, by deployments performed by YAML pipelines in Azure DevOps.
With a lot of companies working with Terraform to manage their estates with Infrastructure as Code this will be a welcomed update.
Final words about Microsoft Fabric CI/CD related announcements during FabCon
I hope that my thoughts about some of the Microsoft Fabric CI/CD related announcements during FabCon gives some of you food for thought about new possibilities. Plus, raise awareness about these updates.
As you can see, the CI/CD story within Microsoft Fabric is increasing. When looking to decide with option is the best for you start first by making sure you know what to achieve. Doing this will help you decide what option is the best one for you.
Of course, if you have any comments or queries about this post feel free to reach out to me.
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