Currently, data consumers always need to use the Lakehouse shortcut when reusing an organisation's data.
Enabling cross-workspace query in the Warehouse will enable data engineering in T-SQL directly when reusing an organisation's data
6 Comments
- Status added:New
frithjof_vCommunity Champion
I wish it was possible to reference tables in other workspaces like [workspaceName].[warehouseName].[schemaName].[tableName] when using T-SQL. I want to avoid using Lakehouse shortcuts due to the overhead of creating and managing them, and the potential for SQL Analytics Endpoint sync delays.This is crucial functionality for dbt users working with Fabric. I'm hitting the same issue in my implementation.
The current setup is frustrating - I can move data between workspaces with pipelines but can't directly query across workspaces. This kills a clean implementation for data privacy requirements where:
- Raw data lives in workspace A with masking and viewer-only access
- Transformed data belongs in workspace B
- dbt needs to read from A but write to B
The workarounds all feel hacky:
- Shortcuts work but add complexity and management overhead
- Cross-warehouse queries only function within the same workspace
- Data Pipelines require completely different tooling/orchestration
- Notebook T-SQL queries are possible but that's another thing to maintain
Bottom line: If I'm a member of both workspaces, I should be able to read from one and write to another in the same dbt process. This would align with dbt's core philosophy of modeling data where it belongs while respecting security boundaries. Has anyone found a cleaner solution than shortcuts? Would love to see the dbt-fabric adapter support configuring separate source/target workspaces in profiles.yml.
- Having a warehouse item shortcut that references a warehouse in another workspace would make this possible. Ideally the target workspace and warehouse as shortcut item parameters in a varlib.
TwinkleCyrilMicrosoft Employee
Status changed:NewtoPlannedThanks for this idea and the detailed scenarios - cross-workspace data access is something we're actively investing in.
Where we are today:
• Cross-warehouse queries work within a single workspace (three-part naming across warehouses/SQL endpoints in the same workspace).
• Across workspaces, a Lakehouse shortcut can bridge the data, but we recognize that adds management overhead.
What's planned:We're building Table & Schema Shortcuts in the Fabric Warehouse, which will let you surface tables from another workspace's Warehouse/Lakehouse directly inside your Warehouse and query them with standard T-SQL, no pipeline copy or separate Lakehouse bridge required. This directly targets the cross-workspace read scenario described here (e.g., raw data in workspace A, transformations in workspace B).
The feature is progressing through preview and is expected to land in November 2026. We'll update this idea as milestones land.Please keep the comments coming.
Hello TwinkleCyril,
This would be fantastic!
I see it's been 2months since it changed to "planned", do you have any idea when it will be live ?
Thank you :)
Best regards,
Tom.
