Microsoft announced a package of updates to Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databases during the European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference in Barcelona, aiming to make enterprise data and its operational context a central part of AI strategy. The package includes general availability of Fabric IQ capabilities within Microsoft Copilot Chat and Cowork, previews for context sharing and database management, and tools for observability, data engineering, and application development.
Business Context Inside Copilot
Fabric IQ connects Copilot experiences to Power BI semantic models and their governed metrics, relationships, and business definitions. This allows users to ask a question such as the latest sales forecast and receive an answer based on the same semantic model used by the organization’s reports, rather than relying on inconsistent sources or definitions.
These capabilities are now generally available in Copilot Chat and Cowork for Fabric and Power BI customers, while preserving existing access and governance controls. Integration with the new Code experience is still forthcoming through the Frontier program.
Context Sharing and Observability Across Environments
IQ Sharing in Fabric is available in preview as part of Fabric IQ. It enables the sharing of data and the business context that explains its meaning with customers, partners, and other teams, while keeping the underlying assets governed. Microsoft says the feature will expand from the current Fabric IQ elements to facilitate the discovery, sharing, and activation of trusted context across organizations, platforms, and ecosystems.
Microsoft also added Observability capabilities in Fabric, bringing monitoring across workspaces, tasks, capacities, and workloads into a unified view through the enhanced Monitor Hub. Operations Agents and Activator help analyze issues and identify their causes using AI and automate responses.
From Data to Applications and Database Management
Fabric Apps provides a path for building AI-powered business applications directly on top of governed data in Fabric, with capabilities for data connectivity, transactional workloads, backend logic, storage, and policy-based access control.
In data engineering, the new agentic features provide autonomous execution for complex initiatives within boundaries defined by engineers. The team defines the outcome and constraints, while the agent plans and executes the work, validates the results, and improves the approach without removing humans or controls from the loop.
SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available, allowing SQL Server and Azure services to run in on-premises environments. Running disconnected from cloud connectivity remains in preview and is intended for environments where connectivity is restricted, intermittent, or unavailable.
Database Hub in Fabric has also entered public preview, providing a centralized control plane for managing SQL Server, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, and SQL databases in Fabric. Specialized agents for SQL and PostgreSQL databases will soon be available in public preview within Database Hub and Visual Studio Code to help investigate issues, analyze performance bottlenecks, and identify optimization opportunities.
What Is Changing in Practice?
The announcements bring together the data, governance, application, and agent layers instead of treating them as separate systems. The clearest practical value for Power BI and Fabric customers is the transfer of approved definitions and metrics into Copilot interactions, while Azure Local options give organizations operating in regulated, on-premises, or disconnected environments greater flexibility in where their data runs.
However, maturity is not uniform across the capabilities: Fabric IQ in Copilot Chat and Cowork is generally available, while IQ Sharing, disconnected operation for SQL Server on Azure Local, and Database Hub remain in preview. Code integration and some database agents have also not yet reached general availability. Therefore, the package represents less a single platform with fully completed capabilities than a direction for expanding Fabric’s role as a data, governance, and operations layer for AI applications.