Clone Tables in Fabric Warehouse – Zero Copy Cloning with T-SQL | Microsoft Fabric Tutorial

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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