Data Lake Analytics

Data Lake Analytics retired in Feb. 2024. It was the analytic component of Azure Data Lake that automated the deployment of computing resources. It worked with Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen 1, which was also retired in Feb. 2024.

Service Overview 

Key to Analytics was U-SQL, a SQL-like query language developed by Microsoft that includes traditional T-SQL components and supports C# scripting, R, and Python and that removed the need to use Hadoop tools. U-SQL was 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 allowed developers to build and process compute jobs written using U-SQL, such as running a correlation analysis to look for trends. Jobs were written in Visual Studio, allowing developers to integrate jobs in applications for automatic execution. Jobs were submitted through the Azure portal and programmatically with Visual Studio tools, a Data Lake RESTful API, and PowerShell.