Azure Synapse Analytics
An Azure analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics. Previously known as Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
5,378 questions
Azure Synapse - External Tables, Dedicated SQL Pool confusion
Debbie Edwards
521
Reputation points
I wonder if anyone could help with my confusion over the learning path.
You create the following to make external tables in the Serverless SQL Pool
CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE to reference an external Azure storage and specify the credential that should be used to access the storage.
- CREATE EXTERNAL FILE FORMAT to describe format of CSV or Parquet files.
- CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE on top of the files placed on the data source with the same file format.
And in the learning path you also needed to create database first. I assumed at the time that wasn't a dedicated sql pool because when I worked with external tables I didn't have to unpause.
But now I have an unpaused dedicated sql pool and in Workspace it looks exactly the same as the one I created to set up external tables....
SQL Database
Database Name
- Tables
- External Tables
- External Resources
- Views
- Programmability
- Schemas
- Security
Does this mean that the SQL Database is Dedicated SQL Pool AND Serverless SQL Pool at the same time? If you are only working with the external tables, does this mean you don't have to unpause anything?
Azure Synapse Analytics
{count} votes
-
Nandan Hegde 36,151 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator2023-10-20T10:04:07.62+00:00 Hey Debbie,
Good day!Sorry, I seem to be confused. Are you asking what is the difference of External tables in Azure SQL database, Dedicated pool and Synpase serverless?
-
Debbie Edwards 521 Reputation points
2023-10-20T10:07:25.0066667+00:00 Hi, Sorry I don't really understand your response. Hopefully my original question is fairly clear. I don't think there is any other way I can put it
-
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(54.400000000000006, 38%, 15%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EQ%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
QuantumCache 20,366 Reputation points Moderator2023-10-31T05:02:12.6766667+00:00 Hello @Debbie Edwards Sorry for the delayed response.
Creating a database is a prerequisite for creating external tables, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a Dedicated SQL Pool, Could you please let us know how the Database was created?
when working with external tables, you don't need to unpause anything, but when working with a Dedicated SQL Pool, you need to unpause it to use it.
Regarding unpausing, if you are only working with external tables, you don't need to unpause anything. The Dedicated SQL Pool needs to be unpaused only when you want to use it for running queries. External tables are created on top of external data sources, and they don't require any compute resources to be allocated. Therefore, you don't need to unpause the Dedicated SQL Pool to work with external tables.
I hope this clears up your initial query. Let me know if you have any further questions!
Sign in to comment
Sign in to answer