Overview of Synapse Analytics

Synapse Analytics is a platform comprising multiple components that can all work together to provide an end-to-end analytical solution. As explained in Chapter 7, Dimensional Modeling, performing analytics on operational databases comes with challenges and limitations. In a modern environment, you gather data from various source systems in a data lake. The data in the data lake might need validation and curation. The data can then serve as a source for a dimensionally modeled data mart that acts as a serving layer to enable users to actually use the data.

This process involves moving data from one layer to the next, processing the data, transforming the data, and serving the data to users and applications such as Azure Analysis Services and Power BI. Synapse Analytics brings all this together in one suite. It comes with Synapse Analytics Studio, a web-based environment to create and manage the entire solution. Figure 8.1 shows a schematic of Azure Synapse...