In the previous post, we discussed about Dedicated SQL Pool in Azure Synapse Analytics. This post will focus on serverless SQL Pool in Synapse Analytics.
Serverless SQL Pool is a SQL query service that comes built-in within Synapse Analytics. It enables users to query non-relational data sources without the need of underlying provisioned hardware or software resources. (Internally, it uses pooled resources, hence the name serverless SQL Pool). A default service endpoint is provided inside the Azure Synapse Analytics instance.
The major benefit as well as primary use case of using serverless SQL Pool is quick data discovery and exploration. This feature enables data engineers to quickly assess the structure, quality and volume of data in non-relational format (CSV,JSON, Parquet etc.) stored in the data lake using the familiar T-SQL syntax.
There are also other secondary use cases for serverless SQL Pool, such as the following:
- Creating a unified relational logical data warehouse without moving the underlying files, irrespective of the various file types (CSV, JSON, Parquet etc.)
- Simple data transformations and visualization of the stored data using BI tools such as Power BI
- Integration with Apache Spark databases using Spark External tables
Apart from enabling data engineers/scientists to perform ad-hoc querying, serverless SQL Pool also provides out-of-the-box connectivity for any tool that can establish a TDS connection.
Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql/on-demand-workspace-overview
Azure Data Engineering 
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