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Azure Synapse Icon Azure Synapse ODBC Driver

The Azure Synapse ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Azure Synapse, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Azure Synapse data like you would a database - read, write, and update Azure Synapse. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Analyze Azure Synapse Data in R


Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Azure Synapse data in Microsoft R Open.

Access Azure Synapse data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Azure Synapse and the RODBC package to work with remote Azure Synapse data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Azure Synapse data and visualize Azure Synapse data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Azure Synapse as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Azure Synapse follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

Connecting to Azure Synapse

In addition to providing authentication (see below), set the following properties to connect to a Azure Synapse database:

  • Server: The server running Azure. You can find this by logging into the Azure portal and navigating to Azure Synapse Analytics -> Select your database -> Overview -> Server name.
  • Database: The name of the database, as seen in the Azure portal on the Azure Synapse Analytics page.

Authenticating to Azure Synapse

Connect to Azure Synapse using the following properties:

  • User: The username provided for authentication with Azure.
  • Password: The password associated with the authenticating user.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Azure Synapse in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData AzureSynapse Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Azure Synapse Description = My Description User = myuser Password = mypassword Server = localhost Database = Northwind

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint) checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Azure Synapse Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData AzureSynapse Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Azure Synapse APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Azure Synapse API.

products <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, ProductName FROM Products WHERE ProductName = 'Konbu'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(products)

Plot Azure Synapse Data

You can now analyze Azure Synapse data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2)) barplot(products$ProductName, main="Azure Synapse Products", names.arg = products$Id, horiz=TRUE)