Get started with Azure Data Lake Analytics using Azure CLI

Article
12/20/2023

Important

New Azure Data Lake Analytics accounts can no longer be created unless your subscription has been enabled. If you need your subscription to be enabled contact support and provide your business scenario.

If you are already using Azure Data Lake Analytics, you'll need to create a migration plan to Azure Synapse Analytics for your organization by February 29th, 2024.

This article describes how to use the Azure CLI command-line interface to create Azure Data Lake Analytics accounts, submit USQL jobs, and catalogs. The job reads a tab separated values (TSV) file and converts it into a comma-separated values (CSV) file.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need the following items:

An Azure subscription. See Get Azure free trial.
This article requires that you're running the Azure CLI version 2.0 or later. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

To sign in to your Azure subscription:

az login

You're requested to browse to a URL, and enter an authentication code. And then follow the instructions to enter your credentials.

Once you've logged in, the login command lists your subscriptions.

To use a specific subscription:

az account set --subscription <subscription id>

Create Data Lake Analytics account

You need a Data Lake Analytics account before you can run any jobs. To create a Data Lake Analytics account, you must specify the following items:

Azure Resource Group. A Data Lake Analytics account must be created within an Azure Resource group. Azure Resource Manager enables you to work with the resources in your application as a group. You can deploy, update, or delete all of the resources for your application in a single, coordinated operation.

To list the existing resource groups under your subscription:

az group list

To create a new resource group:

az group create --name "<Resource Group Name>" --location "<Azure Location>"

Data Lake Analytics account name. Each Data Lake Analytics account has a name.
Location. Use one of the Azure data centers that supports Data Lake Analytics.
Default Data Lake Store account: Each Data Lake Analytics account has a default Data Lake Store account.

To list the existing Data Lake Store account:

az dls account list

To create a new Data Lake Store account:

az dls account create --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --resource-group "<Resource Group Name>"

Use the following syntax to create a Data Lake Analytics account:

az dla account create --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>" --resource-group "<Resource Group Name>" --location "<Azure location>" --default-data-lake-store "<Default Data Lake Store Account Name>"

After creating an account, you can use the following commands to list the accounts and show account details:

az dla account list
az dla account show --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>"

Upload data to Data Lake Store

In this tutorial, you process some search logs. The search log can be stored in either Data Lake store or Azure Blob storage.

The Azure portal provides a user interface for copying some sample data files to the default Data Lake Store account, which include a search log file. See Prepare source data to upload the data to the default Data Lake Store account.

To upload files using Azure CLI, use the following commands:

az dls fs upload --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --source-path "<Source File Path>" --destination-path "<Destination File Path>"
az dls fs list --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --path "<Path>"

Data Lake Analytics can also access Azure Blob storage. For uploading data to Azure Blob storage, see Using the Azure CLI with Azure Storage.

Submit Data Lake Analytics jobs

The Data Lake Analytics jobs are written in the U-SQL language. To learn more about U-SQL, see Get started with U-SQL language and U-SQL language reference.

To create a Data Lake Analytics job script

Create a text file with following U-SQL script, and save the text file to your workstation:

@a  =
    SELECT * FROM
        (VALUES
            ("Contoso", 1500.0),
            ("Woodgrove", 2700.0)
        ) AS
              D( customer, amount );
OUTPUT @a
    TO "/data.csv"
    USING Outputters.Csv();

This U-SQL script reads the source data file using Extractors.Tsv(), and then creates a csv file using Outputters.Csv().

Don't modify the two paths unless you copy the source file into a different location. Data Lake Analytics creates the output folder if it doesn't exist.

It's simpler to use relative paths for files stored in default Data Lake Store accounts. You can also use absolute paths. For example:

adl://<Data LakeStorageAccountName>.azuredatalakestore.net:443/Samples/Data/SearchLog.tsv

You must use absolute paths to access files in linked Storage accounts. The syntax for files stored in linked Azure Storage account is:

wasb://<BlobContainerName>@<StorageAccountName>.blob.core.windows.net/Samples/Data/SearchLog.tsv

Note

Azure Blob container with public blobs are not supported. Azure Blob container with public containers are not supported.

To submit jobs

Use the following syntax to submit a job.

az dla job submit --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>" --job-name "<Job Name>" --script "<Script Path and Name>"

For example:

az dla job submit --account "myadlaaccount" --job-name "myadlajob" --script @"C:\DLA\myscript.txt"

To list jobs and show job details

az dla job list --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>"
az dla job show --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>" --job-identity "<Job Id>"

To cancel jobs

az dla job cancel --account "<Data Lake Analytics Account Name>" --job-identity "<Job Id>"

Retrieve job results

After a job is completed, you can use the following commands to list the output files, and download the files:

az dls fs list --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --source-path "/Output" --destination-path "<Destination>"
az dls fs preview --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --path "/Output/SearchLog-from-Data-Lake.csv"
az dls fs preview --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --path "/Output/SearchLog-from-Data-Lake.csv" --length 128 --offset 0
az dls fs download --account "<Data Lake Store Account Name>" --source-path "/Output/SearchLog-from-Data-Lake.csv" --destination-path "<Destination Path and File Name>"