Book Image

Business Intelligence with Databricks SQL

By : Vihag Gupta
Book Image

Business Intelligence with Databricks SQL

By: Vihag Gupta

Overview of this book

In this new era of data platform system design, data lakes and data warehouses are giving way to the lakehouse – a new type of data platform system that aims to unify all data analytics into a single platform. Databricks, with its Databricks SQL product suite, is the hottest lakehouse platform out there, harnessing the power of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, and other innovations to enable data warehousing capabilities on the lakehouse with data lake economics. This book is a comprehensive hands-on guide that helps you explore all the advanced features, use cases, and technology components of Databricks SQL. You’ll start with the lakehouse architecture fundamentals and understand how Databricks SQL fits into it. The book then shows you how to use the platform, from exploring data, executing queries, building reports, and using dashboards through to learning the administrative aspects of the lakehouse – data security, governance, and management of the computational power of the lakehouse. You’ll also delve into the core technology enablers of Databricks SQL – Delta Lake and Photon. Finally, you’ll get hands-on with advanced SQL commands for ingesting data and maintaining the lakehouse. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered Databricks SQL and be able to deploy and deliver fast, scalable business intelligence on the lakehouse.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Databricks SQL on the Lakehouse
9
Part 2: Internals of Databricks SQL
13
Part 3: Databricks SQL Commands
16
Part 4: TPC-DS, Experiments, and Frequently Asked Questions

The SQL persona view

The SQL persona is the focus of this book, so let’s start with that first. The following screenshot shows the home page of the SQL persona. The now-familiar left-hand sidebar should be visible, with SQL persona-specific options in the middle section. The landing page itself should show quick links to daily workflow features such as Query Editor, BI Connectors, and Data Explorer. Once the Databricks SQL product has seen some usage, links to recent work such as queries, dashboards, and others will also be populated on the main page for fast access:

Figure 2.3 – The SQL persona home page

Note for New Workspaces

The interface shown in the preceding screenshot has an additional sidebar called Get started. You will see this if this is the first time Databricks SQL has been accessed in the workspace. Depending on the user’s privileges, certain options will be provided to help them get started with Databricks SQL from an...