What is Synapse and Why Should You Learn It as a Power BI Developer?
Anurodh Kumar
Freelance PowerBI Developer | Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power BI, Grafana and similar tools.
1?? What is Microsoft Synapse?
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an advanced cloud-based analytics service that combines big data and data warehousing into a single platform. It allows you to ingest, transform, analyze, and visualize data efficiently.
Key Components:
? Synapse SQL – For querying structured data
? Spark Pools – For big data processing
? Pipelines – For data integration (ETL/ELT)
? Synapse Studio – A unified workspace for analytics
2?? Why Should a Power BI Developer Learn Synapse?
?? Seamless Power BI Integration – Synapse works directly with Power BI, making it easy to pull and visualize data.
?? Handles Large Datasets Efficiently – If your Power BI reports deal with millions or billions of records, Synapse provides optimized performance.
?? Improved Query Performance – With distributed computing, Synapse speeds up data queries for Power BI reports.
?? Supports Both Structured & Unstructured Data – Unlike traditional SQL databases, Synapse can handle both relational (SQL-based) and big data (JSON, Parquet, CSV).
?? Security & Governance – Built-in Row-Level Security (RLS) and Access Controls ensure data protection.
3?? How Can You Use Synapse in Power BI?
? Connect Power BI to Synapse SQL Pools for optimized queries.
? Use DirectQuery Mode to fetch real-time data from Synapse.
? Leverage Materialized Views in Synapse for faster performance.
? Use Synapse Pipelines to automate data ingestion for Power BI.