Cross-Workspace Lakehouse Querying Without Data Copies
You have a Fabric tenant that contains two workspaces named Workspace1 and Workspace2. Workspace1 contains a lakehouse named Lakehouse1. Workspace2 contains a lakehouse named Lakehouse2. Lakehouse1 contains a table named dbo.Sales. Lakehouse2 contains a table named dbo.Customers. You need to ensure that you can write queries that reference both dbo.Sales and dbo.Customers in the same SQL query without making additional copies of the tables. What should you use?
Community Votes
100% of anonymous learners picked answer A. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Community Insight
This question tests cross-workspace data access in Fabric; the common trap is thinking a view can span lakehouses without an underlying shortcut.
Microsoft Fabric shortcuts allow you to query tables across different lakehouses and workspaces without duplicating data. This page establishes that a shortcut is the correct feature to use for cross-workspace SQL queries.
Choosing a view because views combine data, but failing to realize views cannot directly reference external lakehouses without a shortcut first.
Community Discussion (12 comments)
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Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
A shortcut in Microsoft Fabric creates a reference to data in another location without moving or copying it. By creating a shortcut to the table in the other workspace's lakehouse, you can query both tables in the same SQL context seamlessly. This natively satisfies the requirement to reference both tables without making additional copies.Why the Other Options Are Wrong
A dataflow would physically copy the data, violating the requirement of no additional copies. A view cannot be created directly across different workspaces without first establishing a shortcut to bring the table into the local lakehouse context. A managed table is just a storage format and does not provide cross-workspace referencing capabilities.Community Comment Notes
Commenters emphasized that shortcuts are designed specifically for accessing data without copying, as vernillen noted: "specifically designed for accessing data without making an additional copy". Another user pointed out the prerequisite for views, stating "you need to create shortcuts first to access table in different workspaces".Official Reference
Exam Strategy
When asked to access data across workspaces or lakehouses without moving or copying it, immediately look for a shortcut as the solution. Remember that views and other virtualization layers still require the underlying data to be accessible within the same context.
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