TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric share a joined vision: they both aim to simplify analytics and enable business users to develop their analytics workloads themselves. Where analytics has grown tremendously in the last years, today analytics is in many tools very technical, code-intensive and thus requires an engineering/coding background. Not with TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric.
In this insight we take a look at two leading tools aiming to democratize analytics: TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric. On top we evaluate how they can be combined to create the ultimate analytics environment enabled & maintained by business users.
What is TimeXtender
TimeXtender is a leading no-code data management platform designed to empower business users to efficiently build and maintain data estates. The platform's intuitive drag-and-drop interface simplifies the complexities involved in data integration, transformation, and management, making it accessible to those without extensive technical expertise.
Rather than hiring an extra technical data engineer, TimeXtender aims to offer you a toolkit that delivers at minimum the same: Firstly, TimeXtender allows business users to develop themselves – i.e. building basic data extractions, creating data transformations joining information from various data sources into a data models, making your semantic data model ready for Power BI. Secondly, TimeXtender’s platform embeds a broad set of automation features making sure its users don’t have to worry about technical details like indexing, look-ups, keys, performance tuning, history with slowly changing dimensions, incremental loading, etc.
Read more: TimeXtender introduction
What is Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft’s all-in-one data platform that integrates data engineering, data warehousing, and machine learning into a user-friendly ecosystem. Designed to simplify, Microsoft Fabric empowers business users to harness the full potential of their data without requiring extensive technical skills. It does this by offering an intuitive interface where everything is embedded within 1 cockpit.
Microsoft Fabric ensures that even users without a technical background can seamlessly engage with their data and derive meaningful insights. Users can do this via SQL, Python and some drag-and-drop tools like Pipeline Designer & Mapping Dataflows. With built-in capabilities for data integration, transformation, and analysis, Microsoft Fabric reduces the need for multiple disparate tools
Read more: Microsoft Fabric introduction
Do TimeXtender & Microsoft Fabric overlap or do both tools work better together
Yes, TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric overlap. However, they also benefit from one another and honestly, that’s where we see the magic happen. Let us go into more detail and discover it together.
How TimeXtender complements Microsoft Fabric
TimeXtender enables true drag-and-drop BI development
Yes, both TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric offer a toolkit where non-technical users can build data pipelines end-to-end from raw data all the way to Power BI datasets. There is absolutely some overlap as both offer a low-code interface – i.e., Microsoft Fabric has Pipeline Designer & Mapping Dataflows and similarly TimeXtender offer this via its own cockpit.
Mapping Dataflows
TimeXtender Data Integration
A solid drag-and-drop Business Intelligence (BI) tool should be a balance of the following core features
- an intuitive user interface that allows users to effortlessly create and modify data pipelines without needing extensive technical knowledge
- a comprehensive set of supported connectors on both data integration capabilities (i.e. data sources), as well as data targets (e.g. lakehouses), is essential.
- advanced automation features making sure data refreshes, indexing, performance tuning, and error handling are automatically tackled & optimized.
On most of the above features, today, TimeXtender has a longer & proven track record than Microsoft Fabric.
1. End-to-End Automation
TimeXtender can create and orchestrate data pipelines that load, transform, and deliver data directly to Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake. For instance, instead of manually configuring each step in Microsoft Fabric’s Pipeline Designer, TimeXtender automates incremental loading and history tracking across all source systems. This accelerates data preparation by up to 10 times compared to manual coding.
TimeXtender goes a lot further in automation and thus makes the development experience a lot more best-practice out-of-the-box – e.g. handling indexing & keys
2. Unified Metadata Framework
TimeXtender's metadata-driven architecture ensures consistent data lineage, automated documentation, and version control, which Microsoft Fabric currently lacks natively. For example, a retail business tracking inventory and sales across stores can use TimeXtender to seamlessly integrate these sources into Microsoft Fabric for real-time analytics without worrying about managing documentation.
TimeXtender’s impact analysis identifies downstream the effects of changes to data structures and automates updates. Something which in Microsoft Fabric would only happen at runtime.
3. Cross-Platform Compatibility
While Microsoft Fabric is embedded within the Microsoft ecosystem, TimeXtender enables integration with other platforms like Snowflake or AWS. For organizations using multi-cloud setups, TimeXtender bridges gaps between systems, ensuring that Microsoft Fabric remains part of a broader data strategy.
4. Accelerating Power BI Implementation
TimeXtender automatically prepares data for Microsoft Fabric, optimizing semantic models for Power BI. This means business users can quickly create reports without needing additional transformations in Microsoft Fabric’s Lakehouse views.
In summary, if you are looking for a drag-and-drop or low-code tool for BI development, TimeXtender stands out vs. Microsoft Fabric in the perspective to support you as a business user with drag-and-drop. However, TimeXtender always needs a data platform to connect to & that’s where, by far, Microsoft Fabric is the leading solution.
How Microsoft Fabric complements TimeXtender
Microsoft Fabric enables TimeXtender to create a Lakehouse architecture
For many years, TimeXtender wasn’t able to support a Lakehouse architecture as the data platforms it supported didn’t bring a Lakehouse architecture nor did TimeXtender have the necessary new connections. With Microsoft Fabric, TimeXtender can now support a best-practice Lakehouse architecture!
Remember, TimeXtender is a development tool that acts as a layer on top of a data platform or database. TimeXtender supports multiple data platform tools incl. Snowflake, SQL Server, Azure SQL Databases and recently also Microsoft Fabric. Again, TimeXtender needs this: it doesn’t operate standalone. With supporting Microsoft Fabric as a back-end, TimeXtender can now enable you to create and maintain a solid Lakehouse architecture still leveraging a low-code drag-and-drop interface.
Microsoft Fabric enables TimeXtender to use data beyond reporting
TimeXtender is primarily focused on Business Intelligence (BI) and data model development, offering robust, low-code solutions that empower business users to build and manage BI data models. While TimeXtender excels in BI and data model development, Microsoft Fabric expands these capabilities by enabling machine learning (ML) use cases and other advanced analytics (like real-time analytics or ML).
With Microsoft Fabric, TimeXtender users have the comfort that they can always leverage the strengths of Microsoft Fabric for these use cases incl.
- working in notebooks with Python, thereby enhancing their data science workflows and exploring more sophisticated analytical models
- working with real-time data using Event Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric
- working with Copilot & thus enabling data for Gen AI development
This synergy of TimeXtender & Microsoft Fabric allows businesses to not only develop comprehensive BI solutions but also have advanced data processing and machine learning capabilities, facilitating a holistic approach to data-driven decision-making. Together, TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric create an unparalleled environment where data accessibility and simplicity reign. Their combined strengths not only lower the barrier to entry for non-technical users but also foster a culture of data democratization across organizations not limited to only BI use cases.
Our conclusion: TimeXtender & Microsoft Fabric is a love match
The integration of TimeXtender with Microsoft Fabric marks a significant advancement: TimeXtender, a development tool that enhances data platforms with its low-code drag-and-drop interface, can now support a Lakehouse architecture thanks to Microsoft Fabric. This combination allows TimeXtender to now expand its functionalities to include not only Business Intelligence (BI) and data model development but also enable, through Microsoft Fabric, machine learning (ML) and real-time analytics.
Together, TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric provide a unique solution that democratizes data for non-technical users. Ultimately, the union of TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric creates a powerful and versatile environment, making it an ideal choice for organizations seeking to maximize their data capabilities without the possibility or ability to invest in technical data engineering skills.
Want to know more about the perfect match between TimeXtender and Microsoft Fabric? The Fastest Way to Build Data Solutions on Microsoft Fabric or Contact us.
