Fabric Warehouse Modify schema without dropping and recreating tables

[DerekBaker]

I am wondering the best path for iteratively developing a Fabric Warehouse.  Typically, I am having to add a field on a table and because the ALTER table statement is not currently supported, I must drop and recreate the table.  

This article suggests to use a Notebook but that does not apply to a Warehouse it seems: Solved: SQL ALTER command - Microsoft Fabric Community

Dropping and recreating is not the end of the world, however, the pain comes when dropping as the semantic model in the Fabric Warehouse will not retain the relationships.  So, when I recreate the table, I also have to go back to recreate the relationships.  

Thoughts?  Would using SQL Database Project be the better mechanism?

[frithjof_v]

@DerekBaker have you tried dropping and recreating the table, and checked if the relationship is still there or if it needs to be recreated?

I have experienced some times that relationships persist even if they shouldn't logically be there anymore. https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Dropping-and-recreating-lakehouse-table...

If they do get dropped, perhaps you can recreate them in code by applying constraints on the new table. Otherwise I guess you will need to do it in the user interface...

I agree, not being able to alter tables sounds like something that can create a lot of extra work when having semantic models, shortcuts and other downstream dependencies.

[Anonymous]

Hi @DerekBaker 

Thanks for using Fabric Community.

Unfortunately, retaining relationships when dropping and recreating tables in Fabric Warehouse is not yet available. However, your suggestion is definitely valuable! We use customer feedback like yours to prioritize future features. The more users who request the ability to customize backgrounds, the higher it moves on our list.

Appreciate if you could share the feedback on our Microsoft Fabric Ideas. Which would be open for the user community to upvote & comment on. This allows our product teams to effectively prioritize your request against our existing feature backlog and gives insight into the potential impact of implementing the suggested feature.

I hope this information helps. If you have any further queries please do let us know.

[Anonymous]

Hi @DerekBaker 
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if your query got resolved. Otherwise, will respond back with the more details and we will try to help.
Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi @DerekBaker 
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if your query got resolved. Otherwise, will respond back with the more details and we will try to help.
Thanks