PolyBase Revealed: Data Virtualization with SQL Server, Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Beyond

Harness the power of PolyBase data virtualization software to make data from a variety of sources easily accessible through SQL queries while using the T-SQL skills you already know and have mastered.

PolyBase Revealed shows you how to use the PolyBase feature of SQL Server 2019 to integrate SQL Server with Azure Blob Storage, Apache Hadoop, other SQL Server instances, Oracle, Cosmos DB, Apache Spark, and more. You will learn how PolyBase can help you reduce storage and other costs by avoiding the need for ETL processes that duplicate data in order to make it accessible from one source. PolyBase makes SQL Server into that one source, and T-SQL is your golden ticket. The book also covers PolyBase scale-out clusters, allowing you to distribute PolyBase queries among several SQL Server instances, thus improving performance.

With great flexibility comes great complexity, and this book shows you where to look when queries fail, complete with coverage of internals, troubleshooting techniques, and where to find more information on obscure cross-platform errors. Data virtualization is a key target for Microsoft with SQL Server 2019. This book will help you keep your skills current, remain relevant, and build new business and career opportunities around Microsoft’s product direction.

What You Will Learn

• Install and configure PolyBase as a stand-alone service, or unlock its capabilities with a scale-out cluster
• Understand how PolyBase interacts with outside data sources while presenting their data as regular SQL Server tables
• Write queries combining data from SQL Server, Apache Hadoop, Oracle, Cosmos DB, Apache Spark, and more
• Troubleshoot PolyBase queries using SQL Server Dynamic Management Views
• Tune PolyBase queries using statistics and execution plans
• Solve common business problems, including "cold storage" of infrequently accessed data and simplifying ETL jobs

Who This Book Is For

SQL Server developers working in multi-platform environments who want one easy way of communicating with, and collecting data from, all of these sources

About the Author

Kevin Feasel is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and CTO at Envizage where he specializes in T-SQL and R development, forcing Spark clusters to do his bidding, fighting with Kafka, and pulling rabbits out of hats on demand. He is the lead curator at Curated SQL (curatedsql.com). A resident of Durham, North Carolina, USA, Kevin can be found cycling the trails along the Triangle whenever the weather is nice enough.