Power Apps integration with Fabric

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Posted on by CU12020826-0

Hi All,

Should one map the backend of Power Apps to a Fabric SQL database?

The Power apps is heavily used by more than 50 users with ~100-150 data entries per hour.

And the fabric capacity is a shared one meaning there are other data ingestions job and power bi reports being utilized via the same capacity.

So is it ideal to have a heavy transactional system relying on a shared Fabric capacity?

Also based on the MSFT doc as well, it is not recommened.

What is Fabric Apps (Preview)? - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

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Pstork1 69,545 Most Valuable Professional on at

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1) Fabric Apps are not the same thing as Power Apps using Fabric as a Back End.

2) If you are actually using a SQL database in Fabric then it should respond about the same way as an Azure SQL database would. Herre's a Microsoft article that compares Azure SQL and a Fabric SQL database. Limitations for SQL database - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

So I suspect the question is more "Can a single SQL database handle this design at all".

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11manish 3,038 on at

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In general, I would not recommend using a Fabric SQL Database (or Fabric Warehouse SQL endpoint) as the primary backend for a transactional Power App,

especially for the workload you've described.

This is fundamentally an OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) workload, whereas Microsoft Fabric is primarily designed for analytics and reporting workloads

(OLAP).

For a Power App with 50+ users and continuous data entry activity, I would recommend:

Dataverse if you're building within the Power Platform ecosystem.

Azure SQL Database if you need a dedicated relational database.

Microsoft Fabric for analytics, reporting, and downstream data consumption.

Using a shared Fabric capacity as the primary transactional backend is generally not considered a best practice and may lead to performance, scalability, and

resource contention challenges as adoption grows. A Dataverse/Azure SQL → Fabric architecture is typically the more robust and Microsoft-aligned approach.

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Valantis 6,526 on at

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Hi @CU12020826-0,

One confirmed point to add to the 2 answers above is from Microsoft docs: Fabric SQL Database does not support row-level locking the same way Azure SQL does, and has known limitations around high-concurrency write scenarios. For 50+ users doing 100-150 writes per hour on a shared Fabric capacity, you will likely hit throttling and contention issues as the capacity is shared with BI workloads.
The recommended architecture for your scenario is Dataverse or Azure SQL for the transactional layer, with Fabric used downstream for analytics and reporting. This is the standard Power Platform + Fabric pattern Microsoft recommends.

Best regards,

Valantis

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Pstork1 69,545 Most Valuable Professional on at

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As a follow up to my reply. We need to differentiate between Fabric SQL data warehouse and a Fabric SQL database. They are not the same things. Fabric SQL database is based on Azure SQL and is the same kind of OLTP system that Azure SQL provides. I agree that a Fabric SQL data warehouse isn't appropriate, but there is a newer possibility that is designed for use as a backend for a Transactional system. I also believe this is more in keeping with where Microsoft is headed with Fabric.

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Valantis 6,526 on at

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Hi @CU12020826-0,

Just wanted to check in and see if everything is working now. If you still need any help, feel free to let me know.

Also, if the issue is resolved, it would be great if you could mark the answer as solved so others with the same question can find it easily.

Thanks and have a great day!

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