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Create and run a Kusto (KQL) notebook (Preview)

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Important

Azure Data Studio is retiring on February 28, 2026. We recommend that you use Visual Studio Code. For more information about migrating to Visual Studio Code, visit What's happening to Azure Data Studio?

This article shows you how to create and run an Azure Data Studio notebook using the Kusto (KQL) extension, connecting to an Azure Data Explorer cluster.

With the Kusto (KQL) extension, you can change the kernel option to Kusto.

This feature is currently in preview.

Prerequisites

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free Azure account before you begin.

Create a Kusto (KQL) notebook

The following steps show how to create a notebook file in Azure Data Studio:

  1. In Azure Data Studio, connect to your Azure Data Explorer cluster.

  2. Navigate to the Connections pane and under the Servers window, right-click the Kusto database and select New Notebook. You can also go to File > New Notebook.

    Open notebook

  3. Select Kusto for the Kernel. Confirm that the Attach to menu is set to the cluster name and database. For this article, we use the help.kusto.windows.net cluster with the Samples database data.

    Set Kernel and Attach to

You can save the notebook using the Save or Save as... command from the File menu.

To open a notebook, you can use the Open file... command in the File menu, select Open file on the Welcome page, or use the File: Open command from the command palette.

Change the connection

To change the Kusto connection for a notebook:

  1. Select the Attach to menu from the notebook toolbar and then select Change Connection.

    change connections

    Note

    Ensure that the database value is populated. Kusto notebooks require to have the database specified.

  2. Now you can either select a recent connection server or enter new connection details to connect.

    Select a different cluster

    Note

    Specify the cluster name without the https://.

Run a code cell

You can create cells containing KQL queries that you can run in place by selecting the Run cell button to the cell's left. The results are shown in the notebook after the cell runs.

For example:

  1. Add a new code cell by selecting the +Code command in the toolbar.

    Kusto kernel code block

  2. Copy and paste the following example into the cell and select Run cell. This example queries the StormEvents data for a specific event type.

    Kusto 
     StormEvents
 | where EventType == "Waterspout"

    Run cell

Save the result or show chart

If you run a script that returns a result, you can save that result in different formats using the toolbar displayed above the result.

  • Save As CSV
  • Save As Excel
  • Save As JSON
  • Save As XML
  • Show Chart
Kusto 
    StormEvents
    | limit 10

Save result

Provide feedback

You can file a feature request to provide feedback to the product team.
You can file a bug to provide feedback to the product team.

Next steps

Learn more about notebooks: