Azure Weekly

Issue #556 - 22nd March 2026

This week saw FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Atlanta, so as you might expect, the content is quite Fabric heavy this week; but in other news, a number of retirements have been announced, so it's worth digging into those to see if you're impacted. Starting with the major announcements at FabCon: FabCon and SQLCon 2026: Unifying databases and Fabric on a single data platform: Microsoft's headline FabCon 2026 keynote blog from Arun Ulag covers the full scope of announcements, including Fabric data agents reaching GA, Runtime 2.0 preview with Apache Spark 4.x, materialized lake views GA, OneLake security coming soon, and the first-ever joint SQLCon event serving 8,000 attendees.
FabCon and SQLCon 2026: What's new in Microsoft OneLake: FabCon Atlanta 2026 brings a raft of OneLake updates including shortcut transformations reaching GA, Snowflake interoperability, workspace tags for AI agent discoverability, a public preview of Fabric remote MCP, and the announcement of Auger as a premier supply chain partner building natively on Fabric.
What's new and improved for SQL database in Fabric (Generally Available): Following its GA release at Microsoft Ignite, SQL database in Microsoft Fabric gains a Migration Assistant for moving SQL Server workloads into Fabric, dynamic data masking, improved point-in-time backup restore, and significant vector index enhancements for AI applications.
Maps in Microsoft Fabric (Generally Available): Maps in Microsoft Fabric has reached general availability at FabCon Atlanta 2026, bringing geospatial visualisation of real-time and large-scale location data to any data citizen, with new tile-set scheduling, data-driven styling, and WMS/WMTS service connectivity.

Audit columns in Copy job in Fabric Data Factory - every row is traceable for data lineage and compliance: Fabric Data Factory's Copy Job now supports audit columns that embed row-level provenance metadata directly into destination data, closing the gap between job-level lineage tracking and the granular, per-row traceability that compliance teams in regulated industries require.
New Microsoft Purview innovations for Fabric to safely accelerate your AI transformation: Announced at FabCon Atlanta, new Microsoft Purview capabilities for Fabric include GA DLP policies for Fabric Warehouse, preview DLP for KQL and SQL databases, Insider Risk Management indicators for Lakehouses, and improved data quality and catalog workflow tools to support responsible AI adoption.
The updated Copilot for data engineering and data science (Preview): An updated Copilot experience in Microsoft Fabric notebooks now delivers always-on, context-aware assistance that automatically understands your workspace, lakehouse, and execution environment, and adds a one-click Fix with Copilot button whenever a cell execution or Spark job fails.

If you're interested in all things Microsoft Fabric - don't forget to sign up for our new newsletter - Fabric Weekly - we'll be moving all Fabric content over from Azure Weekly to Fabric Weekly, just as we did with Power BI Weekly 7 years ago. I had hoped to get this ready in time for FabCon, but to quote Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

There have been a number of Agentic announcements: Microsoft Launches Azure Skills Plugin to Give AI Coding Agents Real Azure Expertise: Microsoft's new Azure Skills Plugin bundles over 20 curated Azure workflow skills and MCP servers into a single install, enabling AI coding agents like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code to reason about and execute real Azure deployments rather than offering generic guidance.
Using MCPs with GitHub Copilot without installing anything locally: Tobias Fenster demonstrates how to run MCP servers through GitHub Codespaces rather than locally, letting non-developers and those in restricted environments use Azure DevOps and AL Symbols MCP tools with GitHub Copilot without touching their own machines.
Azure Pricing Skill for GitHub Copilot Using Azure MCP: Thomas Thornton shares a custom azure-pricing agent skill that connects GitHub Copilot to the Azure Retail Prices API via the Azure MCP tool, bringing live cost estimates into architectural conversations so pricing becomes part of the design process rather than an afterthought.

Finally, The AKS Book Is Out. Every AKS Decision That Will Save You a Cluster Rebuild: Microsoft MVP Richard Hooper (Pixel Robots) announces the publication of The AKS Book: The Real-World Guide to Azure Kubernetes Service, a practical guide distilling years of production experience into the key architectural decisions that prevent the painful cluster rebuilds he has seen teams repeat over and over. (Editor's Note: I've just bought a copy).