From Ingest to Surface: Fabric Data Products with Zero-Copy and Lake Views

As Microsoft Fabric matures, data teams are rethinking how they build durable, governable data products in a lakehouse-first world. This session introduces a simple but powerful mental model—Ingest → Transform → Surface—and shows how it aligns naturally with Fabric’s Zero‑Unmanaged Copy philosophy and the emergence of Materialized Lake Views.

We’ll explore how Zero‑Unmanaged Copy shifts the focus from “no copies” to managed, intentional materialization, allowing teams to scale analytics without breaking lineage, security, or cost controls. You’ll see how Materialized Lake Views enable declarative, SQL‑based transformations that turn raw ingested data into high‑performance, reusable surfaces—without hand‑rolled pipelines or fragile orchestration.

Finally, we’ll introduce the idea of versioned surfaces: treating curated outputs as stable, versioned contracts for downstream consumers such as Power BI, data science, and AI workloads. By separating ingestion, transformation logic, and surfaced views, teams can evolve data products safely while preserving trust and backward compatibility.
This talk is aimed at Fabric practitioners who want to move beyond medallion diagrams and into operational, product‑oriented lakehouse design—using the platform the way it was intended.