Book Image

Limitless Analytics with Azure Synapse

By : Prashant Kumar Mishra
Book Image

Limitless Analytics with Azure Synapse

By: Prashant Kumar Mishra

Overview of this book

Azure Synapse Analytics, which Microsoft describes as the next evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse, is a limitless analytics service that brings enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics together. With this book, you'll learn how to discover insights from your data effectively using this platform. The book starts with an overview of Azure Synapse Analytics, its architecture, and how it can be used to improve business intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Next, you'll go on to choose and set up the correct environment for your business problem. You'll also learn a variety of ways to ingest data from various sources and orchestrate the data using transformation techniques offered by Azure Synapse. Later, you'll explore how to handle both relational and non-relational data using the SQL language. As you progress, you'll perform real-time streaming and execute data analysis operations on your data using various languages, before going on to apply ML techniques to derive accurate and granular insights from data. Finally, you'll discover how to protect sensitive data in real time by using security and privacy features. By the end of this Azure book, you'll be able to build end-to-end analytics solutions while focusing on data prep, data management, data warehousing, and AI tasks.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics and Key Concepts
4
Section 2: Data Ingestion and Orchestration
8
Section 3: Azure Synapse for Data Scientists and Business Analysts
14
Section 4: Best Practices

Using a COPY statement to import data

There are various ways in which to bring data from various sources to Azure Synapse SQL. However, it is recommended that you use a COPY statement if your data is residing in an Azure Storage account. The best part of following this technique is that you can copy the data just by running a single T-SQL statement. The syntax for the COPY statement is very simple, with a set of arguments to choose from. You can decide which argument you want to use with your COPY statement.

The following is the syntax that can be customized as per your business requirements to bring the data from an external source to the Azure Synapse SQL pool:

COPY INTO [schema.]table_name
[(Column_list)] 
FROM '<external_location>' [,...n]
WITH  
 ( 
 [FILE_TYPE = {'CSV' | 'PARQUET' | 'ORC'} ]
 [,FILE_FORMAT = EXTERNAL FILE FORMAT OBJECT ]
 [,CREDENTIAL = (AZURE CREDENTIAL) ]
 [,ERRORFILE = '[http(s)://storageaccount...