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microsoft/unified-data-foundation-with-fabric-solution-accelerator

Unified data foundation with Fabric solution accelerator

This solution accelerator delivers a unified data foundation using Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, Microsoft Purview, and Azure Databricks for integrated, governed analytics. Built on medallion lakehouse architecture principles, it includes domain schemas and sample data for shared domains (customer, product), finance, and sales, along with pre-built Power BI dashboards featuring advanced sales analytics. The solution provides Microsoft Purview governance for compliance and transparency, Azure Databricks integration via Fabric's data mirroring and shortcuts, Fabric Data Agent for natural language data queries, and Copilot for Power BI for interactive report exploration.

The solution accelerator is designed for flexibility, allowing you to deploy the core Microsoft Fabric architecture alone or in combination with Microsoft Purview and/or Azure Databricks based on your organizational needs and existing investments. The solution ensures seamless integration across components, enabling you to build a unified data platform that supports diverse analytics use cases while maintaining robust governance and compliance. By leveraging this solution accelerator, you can accelerate your data modernization journey, break down data silos, and empower your organization with actionable insights from a unified data foundation.

You can deploy incrementally—Microsoft Fabric alone or combined with Purview and/or Databricks. See Solution overview for architecture options.

Key use cases:

  • Unified data platform — Microsoft Fabric as the core architecture with optional integration to other platforms
  • Master data management — Customer and product data models, source file processing, validation, and consolidation
  • Cross-platform sales analytics — Analyze data across Fabric and Azure Databricks seamlessly
  • Finance data foundation — Data management and reporting-ready structures for finance domain
  • Interactive Power BI dashboards — Sales insights with actionable business intelligence
  • Fabric Data Agent — Natural language queries for intelligent, conversational data exploration
  • Copilot for Power BI — AI-powered Q&A directly within reports


Solution overview

This solution accelerator offers a **flexible, plug-and-play architecture** with four deployment options. Choose the configuration that best fits your organizational needs:
Option Architecture Description
1 Microsoft Fabric (Default) Core medallion lakehouse architecture—the foundation for all other options
2 Microsoft Fabric + Microsoft Purview Option 1 + data governance and compliance capabilities
3 Microsoft Fabric + Azure Databricks Option 1 + cross-platform analytics with Databricks integration
4 Microsoft Fabric + Microsoft Purview + Azure Databricks (Full) Options 1 + 2 + 3 combined—complete deployment with governance and cross-platform analytics

💡 Note: Fabric Data Agent and Copilot for Power BI are included in all architecture options.

For detailed feature descriptions and technical specifications of each option, see Solution Architecture and Options.

Solution architecture

The architecture below illustrates the solution architecture built with option 4.

image

How to customize

If you'd like to customize the solution accelerator, here are some common areas to start:

You can modify the data models and notebooks in different folders under the src folder. Please note that if any part is modified, you will need to modify the associated parts accordingly, as the data model (schemas and tables), notebooks, Power BI semantic models, Power BI dashboards, and sample data are a cohesive set of resources working together as designed.

Customization Area Description
Customize Schema Modify data models, schemas, and table definitions
Customize Fabric Data Agent Configure natural language query capabilities
Update Data Management Notebooks Adjust data lifecycle and management processes
Update Bronze to Silver Processing Modify raw data validation and transformation logic
Update Silver to Gold Processing Customize data enrichment and aggregation
Update Runner Notebooks Adjust orchestration when notebooks are added or removed

Resources

Resource Description
What's New in Microsoft Fabric Latest features and updates
Microsoft Fabric Blog News, tips, and best practices
Fabric Adoption Roadmap Guidance for organizational adoption
Copilot for Power BI Guide Setup and usage instructions

Features

  Click to learn more about the key features this solution enables
  • Core Medallion Architecture in Fabric
    Core medallion architecture in unified Microsoft Fabric Platform, with cross-domain data models covering shared (customer, product), finance, and sales across multiple channels. The solution is packaged with 48 Fabric PySpark Notebooks and 2 SQL scripts. All of them are deployed to the Fabric workspace with an automated deployment process.
  • Raw data in Bronze to Silver Lakehouse Tables with Automated Execution
    Complete and automated process for raw data processing from bronze to validated data populated to silver tables.
  • Silver Lakehouse Data Flows into Gold Lakehouse with Automated Execution
    Complete and automated process for validated data in silver tables flowing into gold tables for enrichment and utilization.
  • Power BI Semantic Models and Sales Analysis Dashboard
    Power BI semantic models using gold tables, producing dashboards with comprehensive sales analysis.
  • Fabric Data Agent for Business Data Analysis
    Fabric Data Agent can help you perform data analysis using natural business language. For detailed setup and usage, refer to Fabric Data Agent Guide.
  • Copilot for Power BI
    The built-in Copilot for Power BI can help you perform report analysis using natural business language. For detailed setup and usage, refer to Copilot for Power BI Guide.
  • Integration with Azure Databricks
    Integration with Azure Databricks with Mirroring and Shortcut to eliminate the need for data movement. Additional sales data from Azure Databricks is made available to Fabric via data mirroring and shortcut.
  • Microsoft Purview for Data Governance
    Microsoft Purview reviews and governs selected resources in the Microsoft Fabric workspace, providing capabilities such as scanning data, data discovery, and metadata for the data stored in the Fabric workspace gold tier.



Quick deploy

Getting Started

Deployment methods

Deploy this solution accelerator to your Azure subscription using either automated or manual deployment methods.

⚠️ Important: Before deploying, check capacity requirements to ensure sufficient Azure Fabric capacity is available in your subscription.

Option 1: Automated Deployment (Recommended)

📖 Click here to launch the automated deployment guide and choose your preferred environment for one-click automated deployment:

Open in Azure Cloud Shell Open in GitHub Codespaces Open in Dev Container Open in Visual Studio Code Web

Option 2: Manual Deployment

For granular control over each deployment step or to integrate with existing resources:


Prerequisites and costs

To deploy this solution accelerator, ensure you have access to an Azure subscription with the following permissions:

  • Contributor role at the subscription level
  • Role Based Access Control (RBAC) permissions to assign roles at the subscription and/or resource group level
  • Ability to create resource groups, resources, and app registrations

For detailed setup instructions, see Azure Account Set Up.

Additional setup for extended architectures:

Architecture Option Additional Setup Required
Options 3 & 4 (with Databricks) Provisioning Azure Databricks
Options 2 & 4 (with Purview) Provisioning Purview

Licenses for Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, and Microsoft Purview are required to deploy this solution accelerator. Costs will vary based on the architecture option you choose and the scale of your deployment. Below is a high-level overview of the cost considerations for each architecture option:

Note: This pricing overview is not comprehensive—actual costs will vary based on your selected SKUs, usage scale, customizations, and tenant integrations. Use these estimates as a starting point and adjust for your specific requirements.


Product Description Cost
Microsoft Fabric Core Medallion Architecture in Microsoft Fabric, and Unified Data Platform for integration with other platforms such as Azure Databricks and Snowflake. Pricing
Azure Databricks Azure Databricks stores sales data for one channel and the data is used by Microsoft Fabric through data mirroring and shortcut. Pricing
Microsoft Purview Data governance, data security, and risk management. Pricing

⚠️ Important: To avoid unnecessary costs, remember to take down your app if it's no longer in use, either by deleting the resource group in the Portal or running azd down.



Business use case

After successful deployment of the Core Medallion Architecture in Microsoft Fabric, the Fabric workspace serves as your primary interface for accessing lakehouses, PySpark data processing and management notebooks, Power BI semantic models, and Azure Databricks integration (if you selected option 3 or 4). If you chose option 1, no Databricks folder will be created.

Both data engineers and sales analysts work within the same Fabric workspace to perform their respective tasks. The diagram below illustrates the data engineer UI. Sales analysts can access Power BI semantic models and dashboards in the reports folder.

Key use cases by role:

Role Capabilities
Data Engineer Create/update PySpark notebooks for data processing and management; create/update T-SQL scripts via Fabric SQL endpoints; test end-to-end data flows
Sales Analyst Create/update Power BI semantic models from Gold lakehouse; create/update Power BI dashboards
Business User Query data using natural language via Fabric Data Agent; ask questions within Power BI reports using Copilot for Power BI

Interactive Power BI report with Copilot:

Power BI Report UI

Interactive Fabric Data Agent:

Fabric Data Agent UI

⚠️ Note: The sample data in this repository is synthetic, generated using Python programs, and intended for demonstration purposes only.

Business value

  Click to learn more about what value this solution provides
  • Build Modern Lakehouse Architecture
    Demonstrate how organizations can unify, govern, and analyze data across multiple domains and platforms using modern lakehouse architecture and robust governance, enabling rapid development of analytics solutions for diverse business needs. The solution accelerator provides a complete set of sample data for testing.

  • Processing Raw Source Data in Bronze Lakehouse and Validate in Silver Lakehouse, and Enrich Data In Gold Lakehouse
    Provide core solution with domain models, data processing and data management code with automated execution to copy raw source data in Bronze lakehouse to populate Silver Lakehouse data models and then Gold Lakehouse Data models, to prepare data for analysis.

  • Seamless Integration with Azure Databricks with Data Mirroring and Shortcut, Microsoft Purview for Data Governance

    Provide architecture options to integrate with Azure Databricks and Microsoft Purview for data governance.

  • Semantic Models and Power BI Dashboards
    Provide Semantic Models and Power BI Dashboards for Sales Analysis, such as year-over-year sales analysis, best-selling products, and sales distribution across customer segments.



Supporting documentation

Guidance

Security guidelines

This template uses Azure Key Vault to store all connections to communicate between resources.

This template also uses Managed Identity for local development and deployment.

To ensure continued best practices in your own repository, we recommend that anyone creating solutions based on our templates ensure that the GitHub secret scanning setting is enabled.

You may want to consider additional security measures, such as:


Frequently asked questions

Click here to learn more about common questions about this solution.


Cross references

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Responsible AI Transparency FAQ

Please refer to Transparency FAQ for responsible AI transparency details of this solution accelerator.


Disclaimers

To the extent that the Software includes components or code used in or derived from Microsoft products or services, including without limitation Microsoft Azure Services (collectively, “Microsoft Products and Services”), you must also comply with the Product Terms applicable to such Microsoft Products and Services. You acknowledge and agree that the license governing the Software does not grant you a license or other right to use Microsoft Products and Services. Nothing in the license or this ReadMe file will serve to supersede, amend, terminate or modify any terms in the Product Terms for any Microsoft Products and Services.

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