Plain-English definitions of the core Microsoft Fabric terms for DP-700 study. Simplified for learning; Microsoft documentation is authoritative.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Fabric | The unified analytics platform that holds all the items below over one data lake. |
| OneLake | The single, tenant-wide data lake every Fabric workspace and item shares. |
| Workspace | A container for Fabric items where a team collaborates and sets permissions. |
| Lakehouse | A Fabric item storing files and Delta tables; loaded with notebooks, read via a SQL endpoint. |
| Warehouse | A Fabric item with a full T-SQL engine for set-based transformation and serving. |
| Delta (Delta Lake) | The open table format Fabric uses, adding transactions and versioning over Parquet files. |
| Notebook | A code-first item (PySpark, Spark SQL) for transforming data at scale. |
| Spark | The distributed engine behind Fabric notebooks for large-scale transformation. |
| Dataflows Gen2 | The low-code, Power Query-based transform item for ingesting and shaping data. |
| Data pipeline | An orchestration item that copies data and runs activities in sequence. |
| OneLake shortcut | A pointer to data in another location, reused without copying it. |
| Mirroring | Continuously replicating an external database into OneLake as Delta tables. |
| Medallion architecture | Bronze (raw), silver (cleaned), gold (business-ready) data layering. |
| Dimensional model | Fact and dimension tables shaped for analytics and reporting. |
| Full vs incremental load | Reloading all data versus loading only new or changed rows. |
| KQL | Kusto Query Language, used to query high-volume event and telemetry data. |
| Eventhouse | Real-Time Intelligence storage that holds KQL databases. |
| Eventstream | A no-code item for capturing, transforming and routing streaming data. |
| Spark structured streaming | Spark’s API for processing streaming data in notebooks. |
| Windowing function | A time-based grouping (such as tumbling or hopping) over a stream. |
| Direct Lake | A semantic-model mode that reads OneLake Delta tables directly, at import-like speed. |
| Semantic model | The published data model (dataset) that Power BI reports connect to. |
| Deployment pipeline | A tool to promote content across development, test and production stages. |
| Row-level security (RLS) | Restricting which rows a user can see, by role. |
| Dynamic data masking | Hiding sensitive column values from unauthorised users at query time. |
| Sensitivity label | A governance tag that classifies and protects an item’s data. |