Using Azure Data Lake Analytics

Data Lake Analytics is the query and analysis component of the Azure Data Lake service. Data Lake Analytics (middle) automates selecting, configuring, and deploying a Microsoft-hosted Hadoop cluster, which will benefit users new to Big Data analytics or unfamiliar with Hadoop.

Key to Analytics is a SQL-like query language developed by Microsoft, called U-SQL, that removes the need to use Hadoop tools. U-SQL is used to store and retrieve data from the service, but it is most often used to perform queries. U-SQL will be attractive to organizations with SQL Server skills that want to incorporate the results of Big Data analysis in other SQL-based applications.

Data Lake Analytics allows developers to build and process compute jobs, such as running a correlation analysis to look for trends. Compute jobs are built using U-SQL that includes traditional T-SQL components and supports C# scripting, R, and Python. Jobs can be written in Visual Studio, allowing developers to integrate jobs in applications for automatic execution. Jobs can be submitted through the Azure portal and programmatically with Visual Studio tools, a Data Lake RESTful API, and Azure PowerShell.