Clone Tables in Fabric Warehouse – Zero Copy Cloning with T-SQL
In this tutorial, we’ll walk through how to use zero-copy table cloning in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse using simple T-SQL commands. Cloning tables is useful for development, testing, historical reporting, or machine learning experimentation—all without duplicating data.
🧠 What is a Zero-Copy Clone?
- Creates a new table referencing the same data files (Parquet in OneLake)
- No physical data duplication
- Cloned tables behave as independent tables
- Extremely fast and storage-efficient
✅ Syntax to Clone a Table
Clone Current State
CREATE TABLE dbo.Sales_Clone AS CLONE OF dbo.Sales;
Clone Table as of Specific Time
CREATE TABLE dbo.Sales_Clone_History
AS CLONE OF dbo.Sales
WITH ( SNAPSHOT_TIME = '2025-05-20T10:00:00Z' );
🛠️ Use Cases for Cloning
- 🔧 Development and Testing
- 📊 Point-in-time Historical Reporting
- 🔁 Recovery and troubleshooting
- 📂 Data Archiving for compliance
- 🤖 Reproducible ML Training Pipelines
⚠️ Limitations to Keep in Mind
- Cloning is limited to tables within the same warehouse
- Cannot clone tables from Lakehouse SQL endpoints
- Cloning entire schema or warehouse is not supported
- Time-travel cloning must be within 30-day retention
- Schema changes in the source table may block time-based clones
✅ Tip: Clones are disposable. Deleting a clone does not impact the original table.
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