GatePulse

Run ad hoc SQL from VS Code on any Microsoft Fabric-authorized connection — gateway or cloud — through a generic Fabric pipeline, driven only by the Fabric REST API.

GatePulse is a VS Code extension for data engineers. It is useful when the database you need to query is not directly reachable from your machine:

• Gateway: an on-premises or IP-restricted database that only a Fabric gateway can reach.
• Cloud: a database you are allowed to use through a Fabric connection, but to which you have no direct login or network access.

The pipeline only receives a connection GUID as a parameter and executes your query with the credentials configured on that connection, not yours. There is no backend, no telemetry, and nothing to install on the database side.

Features

• Multi-tenant sidebar — browse Tenant → Connection → Database → Schema → Table/View → Column, each level loaded on demand and cached.
• SQL panel — T-SQL editor with syntax highlighting and schema-aware autocomplete (Ctrl+Space, or automatically after a .).
• Results — sortable, per-column filterable tables, with CSV export of the rows currently shown.
• Connection names, not GUIDs — connections are listed from Fabric and shown by name; databases the login can't see in sys.databases can be added by hand.
• Automatic provisioning — the generic pipeline is created in your workspace on first use and reused by everyone afterwards.
• Unsupported column types handled — varbinary, xml, geography, sql_variant… can't cross the Lookup activity; GatePulse re-runs the query with those columns cast to text and tells you so.
• Safe signals — a banner warns about silent truncation at 5,000 rows and about parameters that were not bound.
• Query history — the last 50 queries (text only, never results), re-runnable in one click.
• Built-in guide — full documentation shipped inside the extension (GatePulse: Open Documentation).

How it works

VS Code ──(Azure sign-in)──> Entra ID
   │
   └──(Fabric REST API)──> Workspace ──> generic pipeline ──> Fabric connection ──> your SQL database
                               ▲                                (gateway or cloud)
                               └── result read back through the API

1. You press Run. GatePulse starts a run of the generic pipeline, passing the connection GUID, database name and query as parameters.
2. The pipeline's Lookup/Script activity runs the query through the Fabric connection.
3. GatePulse polls the job, reads the activity output through the API and displays it.

Every query is a pipeline job, so expect seconds, not milliseconds. See the guide for the limits (5,000 rows and 4 MB per result).

Getting started

Prerequisites

• A Microsoft Fabric tenant, a workspace where the pipeline can live (the Contributor role is needed to create and run it), and a Fabric connection you are allowed to use.
• VS Code 1.90 or later and Node.js 20 or later (to build from source).
• Optional: the Azure CLI. An existing az login session is reused silently; otherwise the browser opens. No app registration is required.

Install

GatePulse is not on the Marketplace. Build the .vsix and install it:

npm install
npm run vsix
code --install-extension gatepulse-1.0.1.vsix

To try it from source instead, open this folder in VS Code and press F5 to start an Extension Development Host.

First query

1. Click the GatePulse icon in the activity bar, then + to add a tenant: an alias, the Entra ID tenant ID and the Fabric workspace ID.
2. Click + on the tenant row to add a connection (pick one Fabric lists, or paste a GUID). The first one becomes the default.
3. Click the tenant to open the SQL panel, pick a database, write a query and press Run (Ctrl+Enter).

The first run in a workspace creates the pipeline GatePulse — Generic SQL Lookup Pipeline and notifies you.

Documentation

• User guide — media/guide.md: concepts, sidebar, panel, limits, settings, commands, privacy, troubleshooting. Also available in VS Code via GatePulse: Open Documentation or the book button in the panel.
• V1-SCOPE.md — product scope and design decisions (French).
• docs/POC-VALIDATION.md — notes from the original proof of concept and the measured Fabric behaviour (French, archived).

Privacy and security

• Nothing leaves your machine except calls to the Fabric API and sign-in with Entra ID.
• Tokens stay in memory for the VS Code session; the SQL credentials live on the Fabric connection and are never seen by GatePulse.
• Logs and reports (query text, metadata, a sample of result rows) are written locally — treat the log folder as sensitive.
• Sensitive settings (tenants, client ID, scopes, log folder) are application-scoped: a workspace's .vscode/settings.json cannot override them.
• GatePulse does not restrict SQL to read-only. A statement runs with whatever rights the Fabric connection has.

Development

npm run compile     # esbuild → dist/
npm run watch       # esbuild in watch mode
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
npm run lint        # eslint
npm test            # offline self-tests against a fake Fabric (logic only, not Fabric itself)
npm run vsix        # build the .vsix

There is no separate server: the extension calls src/core directly. npm test validates GatePulse's own logic against a mock; it says nothing about Fabric's behaviour.

Status

Internal tool for data engineers, past its proof-of-concept stage and manually tested against a real Fabric tenant. Not published on the Marketplace.

License

MIT