Azure Synapse

Azure Synapse Analytics is a limitless analytic service that brings together data integration plus enterprise data warehousing plus big data analytics.

  • Data Integration: Synapse Pipelines
  • Computation: Synapse Data Flows, Spark Pool, Dedicated SQL Pool, Serverless SQL Pool
  • Storage: ADLS G2, Metastore, Synapse Link

Azure Synapse brings together SQL technologies, Spark, Data Explorer (for log & time series analytics), Pipelines and Deep Integration (Other azure services such as Power BI, CosmosDB & azure ML)

Data Bricks

Databricks, fueled by Apache Spark, provides a cloud-based, open, and collaborative environment encompassing data engineering, data science, and machine learning. This unified analytics platform offers a collaborative workspace, catering to the diverse needs of data engineering, data science, and machine learning professionals. With integrated machine learning capabilities, Databricks allows for seamless resource scalability, adapting to the demands of different workloads by efficiently scaling resources up or down.

Comparison between Azure Synapse vs Data Bricks

  1. Azure Synapse Analytics primarily designed for large scale data warehousing & SQL-based analytics. Databricks designed for big data analytics and machine learning workloads.

  2. Azure Synapse Analytics follows MPP architecture, Databricks built on top of Apache spark a distributed processing framework.

  3. Azure Synapse Analytics uses T-SQL for querying data where as Databricks supports multiple languages including SQL, Python, Scala and R also Spark SQL.

When to use Azure Synaps / Data Bricks

Use Azure Synapse Analytics when:

  1. Traditional Data Warehousing: If your primary focus is on SQL-based analytics.
  2. Scalable Data Warehousing: When dealing with large scale data you need MPP support so better to go with ASA.
  3. Easy Integration with Power BI
  4. SQL - Centric Workloads.

Use Databricks when:

  1. Advanced analytics & Machine learning
  2. When you want to use multiple languages for your development.
  3. Supports real-time environment.