>> You might have been hearing a lot about Azure Synapse link,
but how does it work for SQL Server
2022 and an Azure SQL database?
Learn all about it and see a cool demo this week on Data Exposed.
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>> Hi, I'm Anna Hoffman and
welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today we have two special guests,
and we're going to be talking about Azure Synapse link for SQL.
Those guests are Shireen and Chuck.
Thanks so much for joining us on Data Exposed today.
You know, let's jump right into it.
Shireen, can you tell us a little bit
about what is Azure Synapse link for
SQL and what is it used
for and all the good stuff we want to know about it.
>> Yeah, sure. Azure Synapse link for
SQL enables you to link your operational databases,
such as Azure SQL DB,
and SQL Server 2022 to analytics workloads on
real-time data directly through Azure Synapse Analytics.
So with Synapse link,
customers are now able to get insights from
their operational databases in a single click.
On top of that, customers
don't really need to worry about managing
data movement and there is minimal impact
on their existing operational data stores.
>> Got it. So this makes it so that I can
just set up Synapse link for SQL and
now all of the data is being
moved into Synapse so I can query easily over that data.
Can you tell us a little bit how that setup might look like?
>> Exactly. Basically,
what happens is that Synapse link
is a link to your operational stores.
All you really have to do is set up
the link connection on
synapse and along with your operational stores.
You no longer have to build
complex ETL pipelines or
allocate additional database compute resources.
Everything is done for you behind the scenes,
and now customers are able to run analytics workloads
on real-time data directly through Azure Synapse Analytics.
Right now in a couple of minutes,
Chuck is going to show you a cool demo to showcase that.
>> Cool. This is really exciting.
I know this has been around for
Azure Cosmos DB and seen great adoption.
So I'm sure folks are excited to get
their hands on it for Azure SQL database.
Now you also mentioned SQL Server.
Is this available for SQL Server 2022
or other versions of SQL Server or just SQL Server in general?
>> Yeah. Right now it is available for SQL Server 2022.
>> Awesome, cool. So it's part of the public preview,
you can go ahead and start playing with this; is that right?
>> Yes, exactly.
It is public preview so
you can get your hands on directly and start
utilizing Synapse link for both SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL DB.
>> Awesome. Cool. Very exciting.
Of course, the next thing we'd
love to get our hands on this and take a look.
Chuck, sounds like you have something you can show us today.
>> Absolutely. What I have running is I have
an Azure SQL database and I have a SQL 2022 instance,
both running the same database schema with different data in them.
We see here, this is my Cloud database.
I have customers in that table and this is my on-prem database.
I have customers there.
I have set this up already to be replicating this data from
this source systems into Azure Synapse Analytics.
If I run this query over the Synapse environment,
you can see that I have 261 Cloud-based customers.
I have 402 on-premises customers.
What I'm going to do, is I'm going to come into
those source systems and I'm going to add some data.
So if I add, I'm going to add 50 more customers to
the on-prem database and I'm going to
add 100 more customers to the Cloud database.
We can see if I rerun the source queries here,
we can see that we've added the 100 customers
there and we've added the 50 customers here.
Now what's happening behind the scenes is
those source systems are pushing that data out.
It's actually scraping the transaction log and pushing
that data out for the Synapse environment
to pick up and load into the dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse.
The source databases, we want to minimize the impact on them,
so we don't have them right directly into that pool.
We have a buffered landing zone in between
where they write their data and can go on about their business,
and then that data gets picked up and
moved into the dedicated pool.
So if I go back into Synapse and
the demo overseers are being good to me today.
We can see here that now we have
361 customers in our Cloud database,
and we have 452 customers in our on-prem database,
so it reflects the data that I added.
So just in the time that it took me to
explain what's going on under the hood,
that data was replicated up into
the Cloud and added to our Synapse dedicated pool.
If we really want to get fancy,
we can come into Power BI and refresh this report,
which is in direct query mode.
It's going to now run directly against
that dedicated SQL pool and update
our results in the underlying report here for us.
>> Amazing. Cool.
>> All of this was with no custom ETL.
It's a graphical setup.
You just select the tables that you want,
tell it where to put them, and
we do it all behind the scenes for you.
>> Awesome. Just so I understand that you're
keeping your main database or
SQL Server either one that it is
separate from this read-only workload
that you're doing, the Power BI.
So not only are you able to do
these real-time analytics and
querying on top of the dedicated SQL pool.
But you're also able to use that to surface and Power BI,
is that what you were showing?
>> Yeah. The source system,
one of our core tenets is minimal impact on your OLTP systems.
So that system continues running.
We just are watching those transactions come through and grabbing
them and replicating them over
to this read-only store as they happen.
>> Okay. Got you. super cool.
I forgot to mention earlier,
but actually Chuck and Shireen you both work
on the team that build these capabilities.
Now, as you've seen customers start to use these capabilities,
do you have any tips or tricks or
advice for folks who might be just getting started?
>> Begin and start playing with it.
Look at where you might
be consolidating data from
multiple sources like I'm doing here
where I have a Cloud source and on-prem source,
I want to bring together.
Look for those situations as
those are really where you're going to be able to
benefit from doing this
automated without having to
manage those ETL pipelines on your own.
>> Got it. Cool. Well,
this has been a great episode.
Thanks so much for coming on the show today.
I learned a lot about Azure Synapse link for SQL.
I think our viewers have as well.
To our viewers we're going to put some links in
the description for you to go learn more.
If you'd like this episode,
go ahead, give it a like, leave us a comment,
and let us know what you think of Azure Synapse link or SQL.
We hope to see you next time on Data Exposed.
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