Microsoft Fabric, connect SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio or Windows Explorer to your OneLake

Whilst working on a blogpost on Fabric Data Warehouse, I started wondering if I could work around the SQL web interface and connect to my OneLake with SSMS and/or ADS. As it turns out, you can!

Find the connection-string

To be honest, this was the hardest part as the connection-string is somewhat hidden.

In your Fabric portal, go to the top right of your screen and select settings

In the pop-out menu, select manage connections and gateways. This opens a new pane on the left with al your connections. Search for the connection with Connection type SQL Server.

Copy the part after “server”, it being (for now?) a random list of letters and numbers, followed by datawarehouse.pbidedicated.windows.net. This is the string you need to paste into ADS or SSMS.

Follow the regular steps to connect to your database, only in this case, it’s your OneLake. After authenticating and authorizing, you might see something like this. Or most probably something else because you really know what you’re doing.

And I can successfully run queries against my OneLake 🙂

File exploring

And did you know you can install a small add-in for your Windows Explorer to check out all the files in your OneLake? It’s called the OneLake file Explorer and you can read all about it here.

When it’s installed and, again, you’ve authenticed against it, you might see something like this, just from your laptop in your Windows Explorer:

I think this is very, very cool!

Thanks for reading and happy exploring!