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Migrating enterprise data warehouses have traditionally been complex—requiring manual preparation, deep SQL expertise, and multiple disconnected tools. The Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse offers a guided, intelligent migration experience.
The new enhancements to Migration Assistant further streamline migrations, reduce friction, and help teams move to Fabric faster with greater flexibility and confidence.
Why these enhancements matter
Since its introduction, Migration Assistant has helped customers accelerate migrations from Azure Synapse Analytics, SQL Server, and other SQL-based systems by simplifying metadata translation, issue resolution, and migration workflows.
Customer feedback and preview learnings conveyed the needs to:
- Reduce upfront preparation effort.
- Provide more flexible ways to initiate migrations.
- Improve visibility into migration progress and outcomes.
These enhancements directly address those needs to make the experience more flexible, transparent, and intuitive.
“Our migration from Azure Data Factory and Azure SQL DB to Microsoft Fabric was smooth and highly automated, allowing us to move over 300 pipelines, 500 tables, and 450GB of data with minimal redevelopment. The built-in tools significantly accelerated the process, reducing overall effort by approximately 66% while consolidating costs into a single platform. Despite minor adjustments required for connectors, the results exceeded our expectations in terms of speed, efficiency, and cost savings.”
- IT Director, QubicaAMF
What’s new in Migration Assistant
Flexible input options: Start migrations your way
Migration Assistant now expands how customers can initiate migrations, giving teams the flexibility to choose the approach that best fits their environment.
Live connectivity (Generally Available)
You can now connect directly to your source system and begin migration without requiring a DACPAC file.
With live connectivity, customers can:
- Start migration instantly without preprocessing or extraction steps.
- Reduce complexity and risk associated with manual preparation.
- Maintain a seamless, guided migration experience from discovery to execution.
This capability enables teams to accelerate migrations and reduce time-to-value, especially for scenarios where direct access to source systems is available.
Figure: Migrate using live connectivity
Migrate using SQL files (Preview)
With support for migrating using SQL files, customers can:
- Upload a compressed bundle of SQL files to initiate migration.
- Enable offline or disconnected migration scenarios.
- Avoid dependencies on tooling required for DACPAC generation.
This approach lowers the barrier to entry and provides greater flexibility for organizations that prefer file-based workflows or cannot connect directly to source systems.
Figure: Migrate using SQL files
Enhanced intelligence and dependency awareness
Migration Assistant continues to evolve as an intelligent migration companion, helping users navigate complex schemas and dependencies with ease.
Recent improvements enhance its ability to:
- Detect unsupported patterns and highlight areas requiring attention.
- Surface dependencies between objects to avoid downstream failures.
Provide actionable insights to help guide resolution
These capabilities enable teams to move faster while maintaining confidence in migration outcomes, especially in large or complex environments.
Improved user experience and visibility
Several enhancements to the user experience aim to make migrations more transparent and manageable:
- Detailed progress tracking across migration stages.
- Summary views showing migrated vs. pending objects.
- Object-level insights with breakdowns by type and dependencies.
These improvements help teams clearly understand what has succeeded, what needs attention, and what actions to take next—reducing uncertainty during migration.
Accelerating your path to Fabric
These enhancements build on Migration Assistant’s guided, end-to-end migration experience—covering metadata migration, issue resolution, data movement, and connection updates.
By combining this structured workflow with more flexible input options, improved intelligence, and enhanced visibility, Migration Assistant continues to reduce the effort and complexity required to migrate to Fabric.
Whether you’re:
- Starting fresh with direct connectivity
- Migrating using exported SQL files
- Modernizing complex enterprise data warehouses
You can now move faster, reduce manual effort, and gain better control over your migration outcomes.
We’re continuously improving Migration Assistant based on real-world usage and feedback. Share your ideas and feedback on the Fabric Ideas portal to help shape future enhancements.
Resources
To learn more and get started, explore the following documentation:
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