Azure Synapse Analytics Components

Azure Synapse Analytics is an analytics platform and data warehouse service. The illustration highlights key components of the service, which are also the basis for pricing. The components can be used separately or in various combinations to provide a complete solution.

Data Query and Analytics

At the core of Synapse Analytics (and where Microsoft is investing) are the three analytics deployment models. Each is designed for specific workloads:

Dedicated SQL Pool (top left) is the new name for the original SQL Data Warehouse service. Compute resources are deployed in conjunction with a data warehouse database, although the cost for compute and storage resources are separate. Dedicated SQL pools use SQL Server’s PolyBase scale-out architecture to provide high-speed query capabilities, but they are limited to querying data warehouses managed by the service and Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen 2 data stored in specific formats. Dedicated SQL pools are charged based on a provisioned performance level.