About Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Synapse Analytics is a analytics platform from Microsoft that accelerates time to insight across enterprise data warehouses and big data systems. It combines enterprise SQL data warehousing, big data analytics, and integrated data integration so organizations can activate the value of their data faster. Azure Synapse Analytics includes features like Microsoft Foundry, Foundry Agent Service, Azure Copilot, and observability in the Foundry Control Plane. This platform also provides embedded security and compliance to help organizations maintain data integrity. Key capabilities: enterprise SQL data warehousing big data analytics integrated data integration data observability compliance and security Best for: data analysts and engineers that need to extract insights from large datasets.
Azure Synapse Analytics by Microsoft is a comprehensive, cloud-native analytics platform that merges traditional data warehousing with big data analytics, delivering a unified solution for organizations seeking to streamline their data operations. Its primary strength lies in its integration of various analytical components—including dedicated SQL pools, serverless SQL for data lake exploration, and Apache Spark for large-scale data processing and machine learning—within a single environment. This seamless convergence is accessible through Synapse Studio, an intuitive, browser-based interface that supports collaboration across diverse roles, such as data engineers, scientists, business analysts, and developers. Synapse Studio offers visually organized tools for ingesting, transforming, exploring, and visualizing data, making it easier for teams to develop and manage complex analytics workflows without switching between different platforms. Functionality-wise, Synapse offers powerful features like Azure Synapse Link, which enables near real-time analytics by syncing operational data into the platform without the need for heavy ETL pipelines. The built-in support for over 90 data connectors, serverless and provisioned compute options, and automated ML capabilities make it an extremely flexible platform.
Pros & Cons
- +Integration Power: Combines services like Azure Data Factory, Git, and access management in one portal.
- +Scalability & Cost Control: Scale DW units up/down and pause compute to save costs.
- +User-Friendly Web UI: Highly praised for ease of use and fast query performance.
- +Big Data Ready: Suitable for building large-scale data marts and handling massive storage.
- +Operational Visibility: Ability to monitor and terminate running queries.
- +Support & Documentation: Good implementation support and helpful resources.
- +Virtual Flexibility: Pay-as-you-go model and ability to shut down resources when not in use.
- −Desktop Experience Issues: SSMS desktop client is disliked compared to the web UI.
- −Web UI Session Volatility: Auto-refresh may cause loss of unsaved progress.
- −Feature Customization: Considered challenging or slow to adapt with new features.
- −Learning Curve: Onboarding can be confusing, especially for non-technical users.
- −Performance Tradeoffs: Storage speed sometimes lags behind basic SQL DB setups.
- −Connection Limits: Max of 32 concurrent and 1024 active connections (though rarely hit).
Features
Key features
- Accelerated Time to Insight
- Speeds up the process of gaining insights from data.
- Limitless Scale
- Provides unbounded scalability for both data and compute.
- Reduced Project Development Time
- Aims to shorten the time needed to develop analytics projects.
- Unified Workspace (Synapse Studio)
- A web-based, interactive environment for various analytics tasks.
- Converge Data Workloads
- Allows combining different types of data analytics (data warehousing, big data, operational).
- Safeguard Data
- Offers comprehensive security measures to protect data.
- Insights Across Diverse Sources
- Enables analysis across data warehouses, data lakes, operational databases, and big data systems.
- Built-in Security and Compliance
- Incorporates robust security features and a large number of compliance certifications.
- Flexible Consumption-Based Pricing
- Offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
- Documentation
- Provides extensive resources for learning about features, tutorials, and associated solutions.
- Tutorials
- Offers guided steps for creating Synapse workspaces, dedicated SQL pools, and serverless Apache Spark pools.
- Quickstarts
- Provides quick guides for tasks like linking Power BI to Azure Synapse.
- Blog
- Offers insights, samples, and pre-loaded data/scripts for quick starts.
- Webinars
- Provides on-demand access to content on AI-powered analytics.
- White Papers
- Offers step-by-step guidance on deriving insights and applying machine learning models.
- Synapse SQL
- Includes both dedicated SQL pools (for predictable performance) and serverless SQL pools (for ad-hoc querying of data lakes).
- Apache Spark Integration
- Deeply integrates Apache Spark for big data processing, data preparation, and machine learning.
- Data Integration Pipelines
- Provides the same data integration engine as Azure Data Factory, enabling code-free ETL/ELT pipelines from over 90 data sources.
- Data Explorer (Kusto Query Language)
- Offers an interactive query experience for log and time series analytics.
- Azure Synapse Link
- Automates data transfer from operational databases (e.g., Azure Cosmos DB, SQL DB) for near real-time analytics.
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Integration
- Seamlessly integrates for scalable and inexpensive data storage.
- Machine Learning Capabilities
- Integrates AI and machine learning for building, training, and deploying models, including using T-SQL PREDICT function.
- Power BI Integration
- Direct connectivity for data visualization, dashboards, and reporting.
- Azure Active Directory Integration
- Supports authentication and role-based access control.
- Data Encryption
- Supports encryption of data at rest and in transit.
- Dynamic Data Masking
- Helps limit exposure of sensitive data to unauthorized users.
- Column-level and Row-level Security
- Provides fine-grained access control for sensitive data.
- Workload Optimization
- Features like limitless concurrency and workload isolation for query performance tuning.
- Cost Optimization
- Allows scaling resources up or down, and offers serverless options to pay only for queries run.
- SQL and Spark Interoperability
- Enables seamless mixing and matching of SQL and Spark based on needs.
- Support for Multiple Languages
- Supports SQL, T-SQL, Python, Scala, Java, R, and .NET.
- Data Wrangling Interface
- Provides visual tools for data cleaning (removing duplicates, filtering, replacing missing values), transforming, and aggregating data.
- Partitioning Data
- Supports partitioning large tables for faster queries.
- Data Distribution Options
- Offers hash distribution and round-robin distribution for optimizing query performance.
- Columnstore Indexes
- Improves query performance and data compression.
- Monitoring Tools
- Built-in tools in Synapse Studio for monitoring query performance, workloads, and resource utilization.
- Azure Mobile App
- Allows monitoring and management from a mobile device.
Additional features
- Accelerated Time to Insight
- Speeds up the process of gaining insights from data.
- Limitless Scale
- Provides unbounded scalability for both data and compute.
- Reduced Project Development Time
- Aims to shorten the time needed to develop analytics projects.
- Unified Workspace (Synapse Studio)
- A web-based, interactive environment for various analytics tasks.
- Converge Data Workloads
- Allows combining different types of data analytics (data warehousing, big data, operational).
- Safeguard Data
- Offers comprehensive security measures to protect data.
- Insights Across Diverse Sources
- Enables analysis across data warehouses, data lakes, operational databases, and big data systems.
- Built-in Security and Compliance
- Incorporates robust security features and a large number of compliance certifications.
- Flexible Consumption-Based Pricing
- Offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
- Documentation
- Provides extensive resources for learning about features, tutorials, and associated solutions.
- Tutorials
- Offers guided steps for creating Synapse workspaces, dedicated SQL pools, and serverless Apache Spark pools.
- Quickstarts
- Provides quick guides for tasks like linking Power BI to Azure Synapse.
- Blog
- Offers insights, samples, and pre-loaded data/scripts for quick starts.
- Webinars
- Provides on-demand access to content on AI-powered analytics.
- White Papers
- Offers step-by-step guidance on deriving insights and applying machine learning models.
- Synapse SQL
- Includes both dedicated SQL pools (for predictable performance) and serverless SQL pools (for ad-hoc querying of data lakes).
- Apache Spark Integration
- Deeply integrates Apache Spark for big data processing, data preparation, and machine learning.
- Data Integration Pipelines
- Provides the same data integration engine as Azure Data Factory, enabling code-free ETL/ELT pipelines from over 90 data sources.
- Data Explorer (Kusto Query Language)
- Offers an interactive query experience for log and time series analytics.
- Azure Synapse Link
- Automates data transfer from operational databases (e.g., Azure Cosmos DB, SQL DB) for near real-time analytics.
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Integration
- Seamlessly integrates for scalable and inexpensive data storage.
- Machine Learning Capabilities
- Integrates AI and machine learning for building, training, and deploying models, including using T-SQL PREDICT function.
- Power BI Integration
- Direct connectivity for data visualization, dashboards, and reporting.
- Azure Active Directory Integration
- Supports authentication and role-based access control.
- Data Encryption
- Supports encryption of data at rest and in transit.
- Dynamic Data Masking
- Helps limit exposure of sensitive data to unauthorized users.
- Column-level and Row-level Security
- Provides fine-grained access control for sensitive data.
- Workload Optimization
- Features like limitless concurrency and workload isolation for query performance tuning.
- Cost Optimization
- Allows scaling resources up or down, and offers serverless options to pay only for queries run.
- SQL and Spark Interoperability
- Enables seamless mixing and matching of SQL and Spark based on needs.
- Support for Multiple Languages
- Supports SQL, T-SQL, Python, Scala, Java, R, and .NET.
- Data Wrangling Interface
- Provides visual tools for data cleaning (removing duplicates, filtering, replacing missing values), transforming, and aggregating data.
- Partitioning Data
- Supports partitioning large tables for faster queries.
- Data Distribution Options
- Offers hash distribution and round-robin distribution for optimizing query performance.
- Columnstore Indexes
- Improves query performance and data compression.
- Monitoring Tools
- Built-in tools in Synapse Studio for monitoring query performance, workloads, and resource utilization.
- Azure Mobile App
- Allows monitoring and management from a mobile device.
Pricing
Countries & Languages
Interface languages
Billing currencies
No reviews yet
Be the first to drop a review
Alternatives to Azure Synapse Analytics
Altergo
Altergo is an exceptional, highly innovative solution in the Enterprise Energy Management and Battery Intelligence…
CData Virtuality
CData Virtuality is a modern data virtualization and logical data warehouse platform designed to help…
Axon Datamart
Axon Datamart is a data management and reporting solution developed by Keylane for insurance and…
VMware Tanzu Greenplum
VMware Tanzu Greenplum is a data analytics software from VMware that provides enterprise-level analytics capabilities.…
About Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Synapse Analytics is a analytics platform from Microsoft that accelerates time to insight across enterprise data warehouses and big data systems. It combines enterprise SQL data warehousing, big data analytics, and integrated data integration so organizations can activate the value of their data faster. Azure Synapse Analytics includes features like Microsoft Foundry, Foundry Agent Service, Azure Copilot, and observability in the Foundry Control Plane. This platform also provides embedded security and compliance to help organizations maintain data integrity. Key capabilities: enterprise SQL data warehousing big data analytics integrated data integration data observability compliance and security Best for: data analysts and engineers that need to extract insights from large datasets.
Azure Synapse Analytics Details
Azure Synapse Analytics's In-App Market Place
Does Azure Synapse Analytics have an in-app market place?
Yes
How many Mini-Apps in the marketplace?
1
Mini Apps
N/A
Pricing Options
Accepted Payment Currencies
USD ($), EUR (€), GBP (£), JPY (¥), AUD (A$), CAD (C$), CHF (CHF), CNY (¥), SEK (kr), NOK (kr), DKK (kr), INR (₹), SGD (S$), MXN (Mex$), HKD (HK$), KRW (₩), BRL (R$).
Pros & Cons
- Integration Power: Combines services like Azure Data Factory, Git, and access management in one portal.
- Scalability & Cost Control: Scale DW units up/down and pause compute to save costs.
- User-Friendly Web UI: Highly praised for ease of use and fast query performance.
- Big Data Ready: Suitable for building large-scale data marts and handling massive storage.
- Operational Visibility: Ability to monitor and terminate running queries.
- Support & Documentation: Good implementation support and helpful resources.
- Virtual Flexibility: Pay-as-you-go model and ability to shut down resources when not in use.
- Desktop Experience Issues: SSMS desktop client is disliked compared to the web UI.
- Web UI Session Volatility: Auto-refresh may cause loss of unsaved progress.
- Feature Customization: Considered challenging or slow to adapt with new features.
- Learning Curve: Onboarding can be confusing, especially for non-technical users.
- Performance Tradeoffs: Storage speed sometimes lags behind basic SQL DB setups.
- Connection Limits: Max of 32 concurrent and 1024 active connections (though rarely hit).
Azure Synapse Analytics's Alternatives
Altergo
Altergo is an exceptional, highly innovative solution in the Enterprise Energy Management and Battery Intelligence…
CData Virtuality
CData Virtuality is a modern data virtualization and logical data warehouse platform designed to help…
Axon Datamart
Axon Datamart is a data management and reporting solution developed by Keylane for insurance and…
VMware Tanzu Greenplum
VMware Tanzu Greenplum is a data analytics software from VMware that provides enterprise-level analytics capabilities.…
