Create SQL DW Connections

Release 5.1

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This section describes how to create connections to Microsoft SQL Datawarehouse (DW).

Tip: This connection is now known as Azure Synapse Analytics.

Limitations

Microsoft SQL DW connections are available only if you have deployed the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform onto Azure.
SSL connections to SQL DW are required.

NOTE: In this release, this connection cannot be created through the CLI or APIs. Please create connections of this type through the application.

Pre-requisites

If you haven't done so already, you must create and deploy an encryption key file for the Alteryx node to be shared by all relational connections. For more information, see Create Encryption Key File.

Connection Types

The Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform supports two types of connections to an Azure SQL DW data warehouse:

Connection Type

Description

Notes

SQL DW Read-Only

Read-only access to the SQL DW data warehouse. This connection is available on the Import Data page only.

To create, see Import Data Page.

This connection requires fewer permissions on the data warehouse and its databases but is less performant.

SQL DW Read-Write

Read-write access to the SQL DW data warehouse. This connection is available for reading, direct publishing, and ad-hoc publishing.

To create, see Connections Page.

This connection requires more permissions. You must also specify an External Datasource Name. See below.

Azure SQL DW permissions

Read-Only connection: The authenticating DB user must have read permissions to any SQL DW databases, schemas and tables to which the user should have access.
Read-Write connection: In addition to the above, the authenticating DB user must have the following permissions:
```
CREATE TABLE**
ALTER ANY SCHEMA
ALTER ANY EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE
ALTER ANY EXTERNAL FILE FORMAT
```
- The authenticating DB user must also have read access to the external data source.

Azure SQL DW External Data Source Name

When specifying a SQL DW Read-Write connection, you can provide an External Data Source Name value as part of the connection definition. The External Data Source enables publishing and support for large-scale data ingestion.

NOTE: This setting is not used for SQL DW Read-Only connections.

If the External Data Source is not provided:

The connection is read-only.
The native ingestion of the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform is used.

Requirements:

The external data source must be created by the database admin on the default database defined in the SQL DW connection. For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-external-data-source-transact-sql?view=azure-sqldw-latest&tabs=dedicated.
The External Data Source must point to the same storage location as the base storage layer for the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform. For example, if the base storage layer is WASB, the External Datasource must point to the same storage account defined in Alteryx configuration. If this configuration is incorrect, then publishing and ingestion of data fail.
For more information on privileges required for the authenticating DB user, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-external-table-transact-sql.

Configure

To create this connection:

Read-only connection: See Import Data Page.
Read-write connection: See Connections Page.
For additional details on creating a relational connection, see Enable Relational Connections.

Please create a connection of this type in the appropriate page and modify the following properties with the listed values:

Property	Description
Host	Enter your hostname. Example: testsql.database.windows.net
Port	Set this value to `1433`.
Database	Set this value to the default database name.
External Data Source Name	For read-write connections, you must provide an External Data Source. Otherwise, the connection is read-only. See above for details.
Connect String options	Include any options required for your environment:
User Name	Username to use to connect to the database.
Password	Password associated with the above username.
Default Column Data Type Inference	Set to `disabled` to prevent the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform from applying its own type inference to each column on import. The default value is `enabled`.

Use

For more information on locating data, see Database Browser.

For more information, see Using SQL DW.

Data Conversion

For more information on how values are converted during input and output with this database, see SQL DW Data Type Conversions.

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