Accessing external data with PolyBase
PolyBase has been available in SQL Server since SQL Server 2016, where it introduced the concept of data virtualization. With SQL Server 2019, PolyBase has been greatly enhanced with numerous features and provides support for more data sources, including the following:
- SQL Server
- Oracle
- HDFS
- MongoDB and others
Outside the common SQL Server deployments, the actual first release of PolyBase was available with Parallel Data Warehouse (a SQL Server workload available as Analytical Appliance) and Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly known as Azure SQL Data Warehouse).
PolyBase is a technology that helps you deliver data virtualization. Simultaneously, data virtualization allows you to access data from the original location without any need for data movement. Instead of moving the data from the source and importing the data into a central location for analysis, the data is simply retrieved through a query.
In the following...