A ready-made bundle of Delta Lake and Spark settings tuned to a kind of workload, chosen through spark.fabric.resourceProfile. The options are writeHeavy (V-Order off, and what new workspaces get by default), readHeavyForSpark, readHeavyForPBI (V-Order on) and custom.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Resource profile in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Delta Lake
Table format adding transactions to files in the data lake. In Synapse, Spark pools can write these tables, while serverless SQL pools can only query them.
- Workload
Also called an experience: a Fabric toolset aimed at one job role, e.g. Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence or Power BI. Each keeps its data in OneLake.
- Table options
Set only at creation with
OPTIONS, these key-value storage settings can't be altered or dropped afterwards; on Delta tables they also show up among the table properties. - writeHeavy
Newly created Fabric workspaces default to this Spark resource profile, controlled by
spark.fabric.resourceProfile. Built for ETL and ingestion, it leaves V-Order switched off; reading suits readHeavyForSpark or readHeavyForPBI better. - V-Order
An optimisation Fabric applies to Parquet files as they are written, covering sorting, row-group layout, encoding and compression, so reads (above all Direct Lake) are quicker at some cost to writes. New workspaces have it switched off, and
OPTIMIZE ... VORDERapplies it to files already written. - Get
Key Vault permission on secrets that allows a single secret to be read; App Service Key Vault references need nothing beyond it.
- readHeavyForPBI
A Spark resource profile in Fabric meant for tables that Direct Lake reports will read heavily; it enables V-Order and 1 GB optimize write bins. Workspaces created today use writeHeavy until changed.