lookup operator
Applies to: ✅ Microsoft Fabric ✅ Azure Data Explorer ✅ Azure Monitor ✅ Microsoft Sentinel
Extends the columns of a fact table with values looked-up in a dimension table.
FactTable | lookup kind=leftouter (DimensionTable) on CommonColumn, $left.Col1 == $right.Col2
Here, the result is a table that extends the FactTable
($left
) with data from DimensionTable
(referenced by $right
)
by performing a lookup of each pair (CommonColumn
,Col
) from the former table
with each pair (CommonColumn1
,Col2
) in the latter table.
For the differences between fact and dimension tables, see fact and dimension tables.
The lookup
operator performs an operation similar to the join operator
with the following differences:
- The result doesn't repeat columns from the
$right
table that are the basis for the join operation. - Only two kinds of lookup are supported,
leftouter
andinner
, withleftouter
being the default. - In terms of performance, the system by default assumes that the
$left
table is the larger (facts) table, and the$right
table is the smaller (dimensions) table. This is exactly opposite to the assumption used by thejoin
operator. - The
lookup
operator automatically broadcasts the$right
table to the$left
table (essentially, behaves as ifhint.broadcast
was specified). This limits the size of the$right
table.
Note
If the right side of the lookup is larger than several tens of MBs, the query will fail.
You can run the following query to estimate the size of the right side in bytes:
rightSide
| summarize sum(estimate_data_size(*))
Syntax
LeftTable |
lookup
[kind
=
(leftouter
|inner
)] (
RightTable)
on
Conditions
Learn more about syntax conventions.
Parameters
Name | Type | Required | Description |
---|---|---|---|
LeftTable | string |
✔️ | The table or tabular expression that is the basis for the lookup. Denoted as $left . |
RightTable | string |
✔️ | The table or tabular expression that is used to "populate" new columns in the fact table. Denoted as $right . |
Attributes | string |
✔️ | A comma-delimited list of one or more rules that describe how rows from LeftTable are matched to rows from RightTable. Multiple rules are evaluated using the and logical operator. See Rules. |
kind |
string |
Determines how to treat rows in LeftTable that have no match in RightTable. By default, leftouter is used, which means all those rows will appear in the output with null values used for the missing values of RightTable columns added by the operator. If inner is used, such rows are omitted from the output. Other kinds of join aren't supported by the lookup operator. |
Rules
Rule kind | Syntax | Predicate |
---|---|---|
Equality by name | ColumnName | where LeftTable.ColumnName == RightTable.ColumnName |
Equality by value | $left. LeftColumn == $right. RightColumn |
where $left. LeftColumn == $right. *RightColumn |
Note
In case of 'equality by value', the column names must be qualified with the applicable owner table denoted by $left
and $right
notations.
Returns
A table with:
- A column for every column in each of the two tables, including the matching keys. The columns of the right side will be automatically renamed if there are name conflicts.
- A row for every match between the input tables. A match is a row selected from one table that has the same value for all the
on
fields as a row in the other table. - The Attributes (lookup keys) will appear only once in the output table.
- If
kind
is unspecified orkind=leftouter
, then in addition to the inner matches, there's a row for every row on the left (and/or right), even if it has no match. In that case, the unmatched output cells contain nulls. - If
kind=inner
, then there's a row in the output for every combination of matching rows from left and right.
Examples
let FactTable=datatable(Row:string,Personal:string,Family:string) [
"1", "Bill", "Gates",
"2", "Bill", "Clinton",
"3", "Bill", "Clinton",
"4", "Steve", "Ballmer",
"5", "Tim", "Cook"
];
let DimTable=datatable(Personal:string,Family:string,Alias:string) [
"Bill", "Gates", "billg",
"Bill", "Clinton", "billc",
"Steve", "Ballmer", "steveb",
"Tim", "Cook", "timc"
];
FactTable
| lookup kind=leftouter DimTable on Personal, Family
Row | Personal | Family | Alias |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Bill | Gates | billg |
2 | Bill | Clinton | billc |
3 | Bill | Clinton | billc |
4 | Steve | Ballmer | steveb |
5 | Tim | Cook | timc |