Top 5 Quick Tips for Azure Synapse Analytics

To help you kick off the year strong, we wanted to share our Top 5 quick and easy tips from 2021 for optimizing your performance and processes in Azure Synapse Analytics.   

1. Full screen notebook
2. Optimize SQL serverless queries for performance
3. Manage your costs for serverless SQL pools
4. Bulk loading wizard
5. Increase collaboration with notebook comments 

1) Full screen notebook 

We recently added a one-click feature to make notebooks full screen. Increasing the real estate of your notebooks in full screen mode helps make viewing and editing Python, Scala, .NET and SQL code easier in Azure Synapse. 

For more details on notebooks features, read: How to use Synapse notebooks - Azure Synapse Analytics 

2) Optimize SQL serverless queries for performance 

When querying data with serverless SQL, it’s convenient to let the system automatically assign datatypes for you. This is ideal when you are exploring files in CSV, Parquet and Delta. However, when optimizing queries for speed and performance, it’s recommended to explicitly declare your datatypes. A good example of this is the way Parquet handles strings; it doesn’t store the size of the string, so serverless SQL will assign the maximum, which is 4000 characters. The stored procedure ‘sp_describe_first_result_set’ makes this process easy by pulling the metadata out of the file for you to define and update.   

Read more about sp_describe_first_result_set (Transact-SQL) 

3) Manage your costs for serverless SQL pools 

Configure cost control and set daily, weekly or monthly Workspace Budget limits for serverless SQL pools. This easy-to-use management tool allows you to define and allocate your data assignment to ensure you never exceed your limits.  

Learn more about cost control 

4) Bulk loading wizard 

The Bulk Load wizard simplifies data loading in Synapse Studio. The Bulk Load wizard guides you through the process of generating code and loading data into a dedicated SQL pool in just 4 clicks. 

1. Right click your Parquet file and select new SQL script > bulk load
2. Click continue
3. Enter the new target table name
4. Click Run

Learn more about Bulk Loading 

5) Increase collaboration with notebook comments 

Similar to Word and Excel, Azure Synapse lets you add comments and collaborate with multiple team members working within the same notebook. Share feedback and notes about the notebook, see who worked on it, add to-do lists, mark items for follow-up and more. Adding comments to notebooks ensures that all members of your team are kept up-to-date and informed of the latest changes and responsibilities. 

For more details on notebooks, read: How to use Synapse notebooks - Azure Synapse Analytics 

We hope you found these Top 5 quick and easy tips from 2021 helpful in your planning for 2022. To learn more about best practices, read the following documentation on serverless SQL pool.  

We want to hear about your favorite Synapse features from 2021. Comment below to let us which new features you’ll be using in 2022!