Azure Synapse Analytics logo

Azure Synapse Analytics

by Microsoft · Since 1975
No reviews yet
ActiveAvailable globallyCloud
Quick facts
VendorMicrosoft
Year launched1975
StatusActive
LocationMicrosoft Corporation, Redmond, WA 98052, USA
Countries servedGlobal
Languages12
Integrations1+
Free tierN/A
Free trialN/A
Contact salesYES

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

Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • 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

Free trial
Free version
Request a quote
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Countries & Languages

Global
Countries served
12
Interface languages
17
Billing currencies

Interface languages

EnglishFrenchGermanSpanishItalianPortugueseDutchRussianChineseJapaneseKoreanTurkish

Billing currencies

🇺🇸USD🇪🇺EUR🇬🇧GBP🇯🇵JPY🇦🇺AUD🇨🇦CAD🇨🇭CHF🇨🇳CNY🇸🇪SEK🇳🇴NOK🇩🇰DKK🇮🇳INR🇸🇬SGD🇲🇽MXN🇭🇰HKD🇰🇷KRW🇧🇷BRL

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