User Data Functions now support async functions and pandas DataFrame, Series types
Microsoft Fabric has introduced new features for its User Data Functions (UDFs), enhancing Python-based data processing capabilities within the platform. These updates include support for asynchronous functions and the use of pandas DataFrame and Series types for input and output, enabling more efficient handling of large-scale data. • Async function support: Developers can now write async functions in Fabric UDFs to improve responsiveness and efficiency, especially for managing high volumes of I/O-bound operations, such as reading files asynchronously from a Lakehouse. • Pandas DataFrame and Series integration: UDFs can accept and return pandas DataFrames and Series, allowing batch processing of rows with improved speed and performance in data analysis tasks. An example function calculates total revenue by driver using pandas groupby operations. • Usage in notebooks: These functions can be invoked directly from notebooks using pandas objects, facilitating efficient aggregation and analysis of large datasets interactively within Microsoft Fabric. • Getting started and benefits: Users can enable these features by updating the fabric-user-data-functions library to version 1.0.0. The enhancements reduce I/O operations, enable concurrent task handling, and improve performance on datasets with millions of rows.
