Microsoft has rolled out a significant update to Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Improvements to the Azure portal and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) have resulted in a better loading, monitoring and developing experience.
For those unfamiliar, SQL Data Warehouse lets you easily manage, scale and secure Azure cloud services. SSMS is an integrated environment for configuring and managing components of SQL Server.
Azure Portal Changes
Some of the biggest changes come to the Azure portal. The new update lets you quickly integrate SQL Data Warehouse with Azure Data Factory. The new task panel lists common commands which you can then execute at will.
According to Microsoft, this brings the following benefits:
- “Rich data store support: built-in support for 20+ data stores on-premises and in the cloud.
- Easy to set up: intuitive wizard with no scripting required.
- Secure and compliant: data is transferred over HTTPS or ExpressRoute and the global service presence ensures your data never leaves the geographical boundary.
- Unparalleled performance by using PolyBase: using PolyBase is the most efficient way to move data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse. To load from Azure Blob Storage, ADF uses PolyBase directly. To load from data stores other than Azure Blob Storage, ADF uses the staging blob feature to convert your source data into PolyBase compatible format, and then use PolyBase to load into SQL DW.”
In addition, a new troubleshooting blade offers more guidance. Instructions allow you to quickly find resources on common issues and how to fix them.
Microsoft has also made some changes to the query drill-down blade. You can now see the number of concurrency slots at a glance. This should help a lot with workload management.
SQL Server Management Studio
As mentioned earlier, some improvements have also come to SSMS. The full changelog is below:
- “Execute the Generate Scripts wizard for database users and user defined functions
- View your logical server name within the table properties of your database
- Drop your database simply through the Object Explorer
- Leverage templates for stored procedures and scalar-valued functions.”
You can find more information about these changes on the Azure blog, which also has links to the relevant support articles.
