Call today 0845 643 6463

Azure

  • How to parameterise the Execute Pipeline activity in Azure Synapse Analytics.

    April 12th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Data Factory, Synapse, Uncategorized

    Unfortunately, as of April 2022 there is not an option to parameterise or add dynamic content to an “Execute Pipeline” activity to invoke a pipeline run. However, with the use of a Microsoft API there is method which we can use to overcome this. In this blog post we’ll use the “Pipeline – Create Pipeline Run” API documented below: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/synapse/data-plane/pipeline/create-pipeline-run…

    » Read more

  • Combining Queries from Multiple Sources in Power BI using Merge and Append

    March 1st, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, Uncategorized

    It is always good practice to do as much data preparation as close to the sources as you can before importing or connecting them to your Power BI reports, but what if there are circumstances where this isn’t possible? I had an issue recently where a third-party application had been updated and both the new and legacy versions were being used side-by-side. Logging data from both versions was being written to two separate Azure SQL databases.…

    » Read more

  • Execute SQL Task in ADF

    February 25th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Data Factory, SQL Server, SSIS, Synapse

    If you’re new to ADF or Synapse pipelines and looking for a way to execute SQL commands in pipelines, unfortunately there is no equivalent to the Execute SQL Task in SSIS, but I have found some alternatives which work well for me. For something as simple as a SELECT statement where you want to return results to be used later, you can use a Lookup activity: You can then reference the output of this activity in other activities using dynamic…

    » Read more

  • Azure Backup for Virtual Machines

    January 10th, 2022 in Azure, Backup, Blog

    Configuring Backups Backups are configured for each VM individually, selecting their own retention policies and routines. They can however utilise the same storage and vaults. 1. Select the Backup option under “Operations” in the sidebar of the VM management page, on https://portal.azure.com/ 2. Give your backup Vault a name, (where the backups will be stored), and select the resource group you’d like it to be in. 3.…

    » Read more

  • Azure Storage Backup Retention

    November 22nd, 2021 in Analysis Services, Azure, Blog, PowerShell

    This blog is a follow up to a previous blog I wrote about backing up Azure Analysis Services cubes in Azure, that blog can be found here. This blog shows how to implement a retention policy using PowerShell in Azure Runbooks to remove the backups after a set number of days. To create a new Runbook in the Azure portal, go to the relevant Automation account in the relevant resource group and then select Runbooks from the left hand pane. Note you…

    » Read more

  • Azure Synapse Series: What is Workload Management (part2)

    July 30th, 2021 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Synapse

    So in part 1 we found out what Workload Management was and why we wanted to use it. (If you haven’t read that part, please click here and read that post before you carry on, as we’re jumping in at the deep end!) In this part we’ll be learning how to configure it. Continuing from the end of the previous post, you have two main options to configure this. First is to assign a user or role to one of the existing system defined…

    » Read more

  • Azure Synapse Series: What is Workload Management (part1)

    June 10th, 2021 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Synapse

    So you’ve started using Synapse SQL Pools, you’ve scaled up to improve performance, but your queries aren’t going as fast as you’d hoped. You take a look at resource utilisation and you see that as you scale up, your total resource utilisation per query goes down. But didn’t we scale up to allow our query to use more resource and run quicker? What’s going on here? A little thing called Workload Management.…

    » Read more

  • Azure Synapse Series: Hash Distribution and Shuffle

    March 5th, 2021 in Azure, Blog, SQL Server, Synapse

    For this post I’m going to presume you’ve already taken a look at distributing your data using a hash column, and you’re not experiencing the performance you’re expecting. (If you’re not already aware of what this is, take a look at the following link to learn the basics of what a distributed table is and why you need it in Azure Synapse. I’ll be here when you get back.)…

    » Read more

  • Azure Analysis Services Cube Backup

    December 23rd, 2020 in Analysis Services, Azure, Blog, PowerShell

    This blog is a quick guide on how to back up an Azure Analysis Services cube using PowerShell. The PowerShell is used in a runbook inside an Automation account in Azure to automate the backup process. A pre-requisite for this is to configure the backup storage settings, this details the location of the backups. Two parameters are passed into the runbook (shown below), where AnalysisServerName is the server name for the analysis services cube and…

    » Read more

  • ADF Switch Activity – A neat solution for nested IFs.

    December 17th, 2020 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Data Factory, SQL Server

    Whilst carrying out some work for a client using Azure Data Factory I was presented with the challenge of triggering different activities depending on the result of a stored procedure. In fact the challenge posed was to… Execute ‘Copy A’ activity if the result of a stored procedure returned (A), Execute ‘Copy B’ activity if the result of a stored procedure returned (B), Execute ‘Copy C’ activity if the result of a stored…

    » Read more