What is the difference between Azure Synapse Analytics and Azue Data Lake Analytics

Question

Hi Guys,

I am currently preparing my Exam for AZ-900 Certification. One Question in a training was:

Which service is an on-demand analytics job service that helps you to write queries to transform your data and extract valuable insights?

My answer was Azure Synapse analytics, obviously this was wrong. The suggested answer was Azure Data Lake analytics. So I have searched in the internet about the differences of these services. Unfortunately, I was not successful.

This is the reason I posted my question now here.

Cheers,
Chico

Answer 1

Hello @Ucar Cihan ,

Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

Yes, the correct answer for the question is Azure Data Lake Analytics.

Azure Data Lake Analytics is an on-demand analytics job service to simplify big data analytics. You can focus on writing, running, and managing jobs rather than on operating distributed infrastructure. Instead of deploying, configuring, and tuning hardware, you write queries to transform your data and extract valuable insights.

What is the difference between Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Data Lake Analytics?

Azure Synapse is an enterprise analytics service that accelerates time to insight across data warehouses and big data systems. Azure Synapse brings together the best of SQL technologies used in enterprise data warehousing, Spark technologies used for big data, Data Explorer for log and time series analytics, Pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT, and deep integration with other Azure services such as Power BI, CosmosDB, and AzureML.

Azure Data Lake Analytics is an on-demand analytics job service that simplifies big data. Instead of deploying, configuring, and tuning hardware, you write queries to transform your data and extract valuable insights. The analytics service can handle jobs of any scale instantly by setting the dial for how much power you need. You only pay for your job when it is running, making it cost-effective.

Hope this will help. Please let us know if any further queries.

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Answer 2

Hello @Ucar Cihan ,

Just to add to what @PRADEEPCHEEKATLA called out above . ADLA is a solution which was introduced before Synapse and was used for data transformation . In ADLA you write the logic in U -SQL /.Net / Python etc , but the logic was deployed as a job on Azure . So it was the successful execution of the job which guaranteed the fact the data moved / transformed . So in your question the word “job service” is vital .

Fast forward in current times , Synapse does not offer jobs but pipelines ( there are other big changes apart from this )
If you ask me to rewrite a solution which I wrote using ADLA few years back again , I will use Synapse analytics only , AFAIK Synapse can take care of the use case which ADLA supports barring the fact that it does support U-SQL .

All the best for your exam :)

Please do let me know how it goes .

Thanks
Himanshu

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• Please don't forget to click on or upvote button whenever the information provided helps you. Original posters help the community find answers faster by identifying the correct answer. Here is how
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