Shortcut table - parquet file addresses

[fabricator1]

Hi,

In a lakehouse (Lakehouse B) I have a Fact_Sales table which is a shortcut table, the source table is Fact_Sales in another lakehouse (Lakehouse A).

When I select View files on Fact_Sales in Lakehouse B, I can see the same files as I can see when i select View files on Fact_Sales in Lakehouse A, and all the files have the same file size and same datetime modified in both lakehouses.

When I look at the properties of each file, I can find som addresses: URL, Relative path, ABFS path. 
I was expecting the files in Lakehouse B to point to the addresses of the source files in the table in Lakehouse A.

However, the files which I can see in Lakehouse B has the address to the shortcut table in Lakehouse B, so there is no indication that they are pointing to Lakehouse A.

I am wondering why the address for the Parquet files in Lakehouse B isn't pointing to the files in Lakehouse A, and why the files in Lakehouse B has the same size as the files in Lakehouse A?
Does it mean that the files are duplicated?

Or are the files in both Lakehouse A and Lakehouse B actually pointing to another location in OneLake, where the data actually resides? (which is "Lakehouse-agnostic" - not depending on Lakehouse)

[fabricator1]

Thank you for the reply,

I was/am mostly wondering why the file addresses (URL, Relative path and ABFS path) are different for the shortcut table files (in Lakehouse B) and the original table files (in Lakehouse A).

I was kind of expecting the address of the shortcut table files to be identical to the address of the original table files, because it is zero-copy and the shortcut is pointing to the original table files (however I cannot see which location the shortcut is pointing to, i.e. target path).

The URL, Relative path and ABFS path are not identical in the original table and the shortcut table. The addresses seem to refer to the Workspace and Item (i.e. LakehouseGUID), something like this: 
https://onelake.dfs.fabric.microsoft.com/<workspaceGUID>/<itemGUID>/<path>/<fileName>
which makes the addresses for the original table files and the shortcut table files different.

The attributes which are identical when viewing the files in both the shortcut table and original table, are the file Name, Date modified, and Size.

It would be interesting to be able to see, when looking at a shortcut table (and it's files), what is the location (workspace and item) where the original table is placed.
So far I haven't found a way to see what is the location of the original (source) table, when viewing a shortcut table.

It would be interesting to learn more deeply about this, and I haven't found documentation which speaks explicitly about this. 

[HimanshuS-msft]

Hello @fabricator1 
Thanks for using the Fabric community.

The Lakehouse are pointing to the files . Please read more here : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/onelake/onelake-shortcuts?source=recommendations#lakehouse

<< pasting some inport content from there >>

When creating shortcuts in a lakehouse, you must understand the folder structure of the item. Lakehouses are composed of two top level folders: theTablesfolder and theFilesfolder. TheTablesfolder represents the managed portion of the lakehouse, while theFilesfolder is the unmanaged portion of the lakehouse. In theTablesfolder, you can only create shortcuts at the top level. Shortcuts aren't supported in other subdirectories of theTablesfolder. If the target of the shortcut contains data in the Delta\Parquet format, the lakehouse automatically synchronizes the metadata and recognizes the folder as a table. In theFilesfolder, there are no restrictions on where you can create shortcuts. You can create them at any level of the folder hierarchy. Table discovery doesn't happen in theFilesfolder.

Thanks
HImanshu

[Anonymous]

Hello @fabricator1 ,

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