Skip to content
CSA Loom — the Microsoft Fabric experience for Azure tenants where Fabric isn't yet available: lakehouses, warehouses, notebooks, semantic models, Activator rules, Data Agents, across Commercial, GCC, GCC-High, and DoD IL5

Real-Time Intelligence parity

What Fabric does

Real-Time Intelligence is the umbrella over: Real-Time Hub (catalog of streaming sources), Eventstream (no-code ingestion + transform), Eventhouse (container) → KQL Database (storage) → KQL Queryset (saved queries), Real-Time Dashboard (Kusto dashboards), Activator (rules — covered separately on Data Activator parity).

Eventhouse runs on the same Kusto engine that Azure Data Explorer (ADX) uses — KQL queries are 1:1 portable.

CSA Loom parity design

Real-Time Hub

Loom Console Real-Time Hub pane lists all configured streaming sources (Event Hubs namespaces, IoT Hubs, Kafka clusters via Event Hubs Kafka protocol, partner CDC sources from Mirroring Engine). CRUD via REST API backed by Cosmos DB.

Eventstream

Azure Stream Analytics jobs (in Commercial / GCC) OR Azure Functions stream-processing (Gov interim where Stream Analytics fits awkwardly). For Gov-H / IL5, use ASA primarily — it's GA across all Gov boundaries per research/02-gov-boundary-availability.md §1.

Stream transforms (filter, project, aggregate over windows, dedupe) expressed in ASA SQL or Azure Stream Analytics editor — embedded in Loom Console "Stream" pane. Console renders a visual stream designer that compiles to ASA SQL.

Eventhouse → KQL Database

Azure Data Explorer cluster (shared per Admin Plane; database per DLZ — per ADR fiab-0005 ADX deployment model):

  • 5-10 s cold start matches Fabric Eventhouse semantics
  • ADX engine = same Kusto engine Eventhouse uses; KQL queries portable
  • ADX .create async materialized-view, .create function, update policies — all available in Gov
  • ADX external tables over Delta + ADLS Gen2 → cross-engine access

KQL Queryset

Loom Console "Queryset" pane is a KQL editor + saved-query store (Cosmos DB).

Real-Time Dashboard

ADX dashboards (mature, authored via the ADX Web UI embed in Loom Console "Real-Time Dashboard" pane).

OneLake availability

ADX ContinuousExport to ADLS Gen2 Delta or Parquet. Loom Console exposes this as a per-table toggle ("Also land in lakehouse for cross-engine access").

Per-boundary behavior

Boundary ADX Eventstream (ASA) KQL DBs ADX Dashboards
Commercial ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
GCC ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
GCC-High / IL4 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
IL5 (v1.1) ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

ADX is authorized at every Gov boundary per research/02-gov-boundary- availability.md §7.8 — this is one of the easiest workloads to deliver parity for.

Honest gaps

  • ADX .sandbox Python plugin in Gov: exists in Commercial; verify per cluster in Gov (typically requires Microsoft engagement to enable). v1 docs flag this; v1.1 includes runbook for enablement.
  • Sub-second-on-cold-Eventhouse: ADX cold-start is 5-10 s, identical to Fabric. Steady-state latency is identical.
  • Real-Time Hub UI: Fabric's RT Hub is a curated discovery surface; Loom's equivalent is functionally complete but visually simpler.

Forward migration

  • KQL queries + datasets migrate 1:1 (same engine)
  • Dashboards via KQL dashboard JSON export → Fabric Real-Time Dashboard import
  • Eventstreams: rebuild in Fabric Eventstream (ASA → Eventstream is a manual port; both are SQL-flavored)
  • ADX databases can be attached as Fabric Eventhouse via documented procedures