I would like to do bulk inserts to my Azure database from Python, but I can't find the documentation for how it's done.
This page says:
The following table summarizes the options for moving data to an Azure SQL Database.
The section linked from that table says:
The steps for the procedure using the Bulk Insert SQL Query are similar to those covered in the sections for moving data from a flat file source to SQL Server on an Azure VM.
And that provides the following query:
BULK INSERT <tablename>
FROM
'<datafilename>'
WITH
(
FirstRow=2,
FIELDTERMINATOR =',', --this should be column separator in your data
ROWTERMINATOR ='\n' --this should be the row separator in your data
)
But presumably that datafile has to live somewhere, but I can't find where in the documentation that it confirms where this data file should live. I can create a csv file and upload it as a blob to Azure storage, but nobody in the last year had an answer for how get it from there to SQL Azure.
How can I bulk insert into SQL Azure?
SQL Server vNext CTP supports T-SQL commands that load from Azure Blob Storage. This will be available in Azure SQL Database soon so you can use BULK INSERT command from your example to load data from Azure Blob Storage.
Related
I want to take an Archival(Backup) of Azure SQL Table to the Azure Blob Storage, I have done the backup in Azure Blob storage using via the Pipeline in CSV file format. And From the Azure Blob Storage, I have restored the data into the Azure SQL Table successfully using the Bulk Insert process.
But now I want to retrieve the data from this CSV file using some kind of filter criteria. Is there any way that I can apply a filter query on Azure Blob storage to retrieve the data?
Is there any other way to take a backup differently and then retrieve the data from Azure Storage?
My end goal is to take a backup of the Azure SQL table in Azure Storage and retrieve the data directly from Azure Storage with a filter.
Note
I know that I can take a backup using the SSMS, but that is not a requirement, I want this process through some kind of Pipeline or using the SQL command.
AFAIK, there is no such filtering option available when restoring the database. But, as you are asking for another way to backup and restoring, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is one the most conveniently used platform for almost all SQL Server related activities.
You can use SSMS to access Azure SQL database using server name and Login Password.
Find this official tutorial from Microsoft about how to take backup of your Azure SQL Database and store it in Storage account and then restore it.
I am aware that in ADF copy activity can be used to load data from ADLS to Azure SQL DB.
Is there any possibility of bulk loading.
For example, ADLS --> Synapse have to option of PolyBase for bulk loading.
Is there any efficient way to load huge number of records from ADLS to Azure SQL DB.
Thanks
Madhan
You can use either BULK INSERT or OPENROWSET to get data from blob storage into Azure SQL Database. A simple example with OPENROWSET:
SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET (
BULK 'someFolder/somecsv.csv',
DATA_SOURCE = 'yourDataSource',
FORMAT = 'CSV',
FORMATFILE = 'yourFormatFile.fmt',
FORMATFILE_DATA_SOURCE = 'MyAzureInvoices'
) AS yourFile;
A simple example with BULK INSERT:
BULK INSERT yourTable
FROM 'someFolder/somecsv.csv'
WITH (
DATA_SOURCE = 'yourDataSource',
FORMAT = 'CSV'
);
There is some setup to be done first, ie you have to use the CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE statement, but I find it a very effective way of getting data in Azure SQL DB without the overhead of setting up an ADF pipeline. It's especially good for ad hoc loads.
This article talks the steps through in more detail:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/import-export/examples-of-bulk-access-to-data-in-azure-blob-storage?view=sql-server-ver15
Data Factory has the good performance for big data transferring, ref: Copy performance and scalability achievable using ADF. You could follow this document to improve the copy performance for the huge number of records in ADLS. I think it may be better than BULK INSERT.
We can not use BULK INSERT (Transact-SQL) directly in Data Factory. But we can using bulk copy for ADLS to Azure SQL database. Data Factory gives us the tutorial and example.
Ref here: Bulk copy from files to database:
This article describes a solution template that you can use to copy
data in bulk from Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 to Azure Synapse
Analytics / Azure SQL Database.
Hope it's helpful.
I have a table [Assets] on Azure SQL Server with columns (Id, Name, Owner, Asset). The [Asset] column is varbinaryblob type that store PDF files.
I would like to use Azure Search to be able to search through the content of this column. Currently Azure Search can be directly used with Blob Store or exclusively for table store however I a am not able to find a solution for my scenario, Any help in terms of approach is greatly appreciated.
Is it possible for you to create a SQL VM, sync your data on SQL Azure with the VM with SQL Data Sync, then sync data on the SQL VM with Azure Search as explained here?
Another option is to move your SQL Azure database to a SQL VM on Azure, then sync data on SQL VM with Azure Search as explained here.
Hope this helps.
Azure Search SQL indexer doesn't support document extraction from varbinary/blob columns.
One approach would be to upload the file data into Azure blob storage and then use Azure Search blob indexer.
Another approach is to use Apache Tika or iTextSharp to extract text from PDF in your code and then index it with Azure Search.
While moving data from Table Storage to SQL Azure, is it possible to obtain only the Delta (The data that hasn't been already moved) using Azure Data Factory?
A more detailed explanation:
There is an Azure Storage Table, which contains some data, which will be updated periodically. And I want to create a Data Factory pipeline which moves this data to an SQL Azure Database. But during each move I only want the newly added data to be written to SQL DB. Is it possible with Azure Data Factory?
See more information on azureTableSourceQuery and copy activity at this link : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/data-factory-azure-table-connector/#azure-table-copy-activity-type-properties.
Also see this link for invoking stored procedure for sql: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/data-factory-azure-sql-connector/#invoking-stored-procedure-for-sql-sink
You can query each time on timestamp to achieve something similar to delta copy, but this is not true delta copy.
I have read this SO question but mine is quite specific to the "import" of CSV and not how to access the blob to get the CSV out
Which is the best way?
1) CSV Stored in the Blob - use a worker role, read the CSV from the blob, parse data and update database
2) Is SQL BulkCopy/BulkInsert an option. The challenge here is that it should not have any on-premise involvement. All within Azure: blob->SQL DAtabase.
3) Will Azure Automation help? Are there PS scripts/workflows that help in such bulk update of CSV data to Azure SQL DB? I haven't found any though
Are there other options that help import blob CSV data to SQL DB without having to write custom code?
Appreciate any thoughts...
Your first method would work. You could also use azcopy (http://aka.ms/azcopy) to download the file locally, and then use BCP to load it into SQL - this way you wont have to write any code for this.
Azure Automation would help if you want to do this repeatedly. You should be able to set this up as a script even if one doesn't exist.
I know this is outdated question but for anyone looking for quick way to do this feel free to check my article on how to do this quickly using SQL prodecure triggered by Logic App.
In short you run on master
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'UNIQUE_STRING_HERE'
Then you run on DB
CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL BlobCredential
WITH IDENTITY = 'SHARED ACCESS SIGNATURE',
SECRET = 'sv=SAS_TOKEN_HERE';
CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE AzureBlob
WITH (
TYPE = BLOB_STORAGE,
LOCATION = 'https://<account_name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container_name>',
CREDENTIAL = BlobCredential
);
And then
BULK INSERT <my_table>
FROM '<file_name>.csv'
WITH (
DATA_SOURCE = 'AzureBlob',
FORMAT = 'CSV',
FIRSTROW = 2
);
Just wrap this insert in procedure and execute it from logic app.
https://marczak.io/posts/azure-loading-csv-to-sql/
or just use ADF like here
https://azure4everyone.com/posts/2019/07/data-factory-intro/
Late answer to old question, but...
If you can use an Azure SQL Data warehouse you could take advantage of PolyBase to directly query the data in CSV format stored in the blob https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-load-polybase-guide#export-data-to-azure-blob-storage. This will allow you to directly map the data as an external table and query it dynamically.
This saves you the trouble of writing an external tool/solution for extracting, parsing and uploading the data to the Azure SQL database. Unfortunately PolyBase only works for Azure SQL Data warehouse, not Database, but you could setup something that read the structured data from the warehouse to your solution.
I know this question is two years old, but for those just now searching on the topic, I'd like to mention that the new Azure Feature Pack for SSIS makes this an easy task in SSIS. In VS Data Tools, after installing the Azure Feature pack, you would open an empty SSIS project and 1) Create an Azure Storage Connection Manager, then 2) Add a Data Flow Task, then open the Data Flow task and 3) Add a Blob Source tool to connect to the CSV, and then 4) using Destination Assistant connect to the SQL Table where the data is going. You can then execute this as a one-time load interactively inside the VS Data Tools IDE, or publish it to the SQL Server instance and create a recurring job.