This post is to provide some tips and references for anyone studying for the SnowPro certification.
Snowflake on Azure – Load with COPY INTO
In this tutorial we cover some basic but realistic examples of loading from CSV or Parquet files. The source data is in partitioned folders following a pattern of puYear=#### and puMonth=##, but we do not use the partition columns until the last example.
Snowflake on Azure – Create External Stage
Snowflake, like similar analytic databases, has a fast way to load data from files. The COPY command can quickly read files and append the records to a table. It does this by reading from an external stage which points to a cloud storage location. This currently supports Azure Storage, Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage.… Continue Reading
Monitor Synapse Spark with Log Analytics
Log Analytics provides a way to easily query Spark logs and setup alerts in Azure. This provides a huge help when monitoring Apache Spark. In this video I walk through the setup steps and quick demo of this capability for the Azure Synapse Spark log4j output. I include written instructions and troubleshooting guidance in this… Continue Reading
Ingest tables in parallel with an Apache Spark notebook using multithreading
If we want to kick off a single Apache Spark notebook to process a list of tables we can write the code easily. The simple code to loop through the list of tables ends up running one table after another (sequentially). If none of these tables are very big, it is quicker to have Spark load tables concurrently (in parallel) using threads. There are some different options of how to do this, but I am sharing the easiest way I have found when working with a notebook in Databricks, Azure Synapse Spark, Jupyter, or Zeppelin.
Run SQL Server locally on Docker
I recently came across the need for a locally running SQL Server instance so that I could attach a database and deploy to Azure SQL. The windows 10 laptop I am using does not having SQL Server Developer edition installed yet, so I decided to set it up using Docker. What I like about using… Continue Reading
Azure Synapse Analytics Kickstart
In this post I introduce some of the core capabilities of Azure Synapse Analytics and when they are used. I present from the perspective of data engineer but it should be easy to translate what is most useful for analysts and data scientists also. Please continue reading for a quick walkthrough of the capabilities and… Continue Reading
Azure Synapse CI/CD
For production uses of Azure Synapse there are benefits to implementing Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD). Implementing CI/CD includes the need to deploy the Azure infrastructure in an automated way. In this post, I share things I learned that may be helpful for you. I also have a few links to other content that was helpful for me to get an environment setup.
Azure Synapse Spark: External Python Packages
When working with an Apache Spark environment you may need to install external libraries or custom packages. In this post I share the steps for installing Python packages to Azure Synapse serverless Apache Spark pools. For Python code the libraries are packages as wheel (.whl) files. You can also install Python packages that are available… Continue Reading
Azure Synapse Spark: Add Scala/Java Libraries
When working with an Apache Spark environment you may need to install third party libraries or custom packages. In this post I share the steps for installing Java or Scala libraries to Azure Synapse serverless Apache Spark pools. For Java or Scala code the libraries are packaged as JAR files that you add to the… Continue Reading