What is time travel in Delta Lake, and how can you use it in Fabric?

• A. Time travel enables scheduling data refreshes
• B. Time travel lets you query data as of a previous version or timestamp; useful for auditing, debugging, or recovering data
• C. Time travel replicates data to another region
• D. Time travel compresses historical data

Answer: (B)

Time travel in Delta Lake is the ability to read a table as it existed at a previous version or at a specific point in time. This makes it possible to audit changes, debug issues, or recover data that was updated or deleted.

In Fabric, you use this by issuing time-travel queries against a Delta table. You can specify a version number or a timestamp to see the data as of that moment. For example, you can run a query like SELECT * FROM my_delta_table VERSION AS OF 5; or SELECT * FROM my_delta_table TIMESTAMP AS OF '2024-06-01 12:00:00'; These reads give you a historical view without altering the current data, enabling auditing, debugging, or recovery as needed.