Prashant Kumar Mishra - Limitless Analytics with Azure Synapse: An end-to-end analytics service for data processing, management, and ingestion for BI and ML requirements

An end-to-end analytics service for data processing, management, and ingestion for BI and ML requirements

Prashant Kumar Mishra

BIRMINGHAMMUMBAI

Copyright 2021 Packt Publishing

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I would like to start by saying that data is the new currency for all enterprises across all industries as well as in the government sector. Digital transformations are rampant across every customer segment and data-first modernization is critical, whether for business transformation or legacy modernization. Microsoft's data products and the Azure platform are being widely used for true digital transformation as they provide a single pane of glass to store, analyze, and get better insights into data. For Azure Synapse Analytics, the emphasis on it being a platform rather than a product is key to underscore, as Azure Synapse is an amalgamation of big data analytics with an enterprise data warehouse that enables you to perform limitless analytics on your data at scale without worrying about any infrastructure management overhead.

In this book, Prashant Kumar Mishra, an engineering architect and my colleague at Azure Data Product Engineering, leads you on a journey to learn Azure Synapse from scratch. He explains dedicated SQL pools, serverless SQL pools, and Spark pools in detail. He has also covered data integration, visualization, and machine learning operations with Azure Synapse in this book.

This book is a step-by-step guide for beginners. You will find easy-to-understand guidance on the features available in Azure Synapse. You will also learn how to secure the data stored in Azure Synapse and how to perform backup and restore operations for high availability as well as disaster recovery solutions.

I have been in the industry for more than 20 years now and I have never seen people be as keen on digital modernization as they are now. In this era, Microsoft has done a great job of introducing Azure Synapse to the world as the best analytics solution. I moved to Microsoft approximately 7 years ago, but I have always been an avid admirer of Microsoft's data services, and I take immense pride in saying that Microsoft provides you with all the solutions you need for your data-related problems.

On this note, I would like to thank Prashant for writing this book. This book will definitely give you the full picture of how all of Microsoft's data services are stitched together by Azure Synapse.

Mukesh Kumar Principal Group Engineering Architect Manager, Microsoft

Prashant Kumar Mishra is an engineering architect at Microsoft. He has more than 10 years of professional expertise in the Microsoft data and AI segment as a developer, consultant, and architect. He has been focused on Microsoft Azure Cloud technologies for several years now and has helped various customers in their data journey. He prefers to share his knowledge with others to make the data community stronger day by day through his blogs and meetup groups.

I wish to thank those people who have been close to me and supported me, especially my wife, Saranya, who inspired me to write this book, my parents (Mr. Mohan Mishra and Mrs. Uma Devi), my in-laws (Mr. Ravichander T and Mrs. Kalai Ravi), and my sisters (Supriya and Diya), who have always stood by me in all my decisions and endeavors.

I can't end this note without mentioning my small, cute Maltese, Toffee, who brings joy to our lives every day.

Amit Navgire is a computer science postgraduate, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and a Microsoft Certified Azure Data Engineer. He currently works as a data architect and brings with him 13+ years of extensive experience in designing, architecting, and implementing enterprise-scale data warehouse solutions using Azure, SQL Server, MSBI, and so on. He is quite popular in the world of Azure training, with more than 25,000 students enrolled in his courses, which are published on various online platforms, including Udemy and Coursera, as well as on his website.

Saranya Ravichander is a senior cloud solution architect at Microsoft and also a Microsoft Certified Trainer. She has been working on the Microsoft technology stack for more than 10 years, with a large part of this time devoted to Microsoft Azure, focusing on designing, architecting, and implementing enterprise-scale application development and DevOps workloads.