Just note that External tables are still in public preview.
External tables with type RDBMS can be used in any Azure SQL flavor. This article applies both on Azure SQL database and Azure SQL managed instance.
In this article, I will explain how to leverage a serverless Synapse SQL pool as a bridge between Azure SQL and Azure Data Lake storage. You might also leverage an interesting alternative – serverless SQL pools in the Azure Synapse Analytics. This function can cover many external data access scenarios, but it has some functional limitations.
Some of your data might be permanently stored on the external storage, you might need to load external data into the database tables, etc.Īzure SQL supports the OPENROWSET function that can read CSV files directly from Azure Blob storage. There are many scenarios where you might need to access external data placed on Azure Data Lake from your Azure SQL database.