Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics connection

Last updated: Apr 05, 2025

To access your data in a Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, create a connection asset for it.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a data warehouse anayltics service provided as part of Microsoft Azure.

Note: This connection only supports the dedicated SQL pool.

Create a connection to Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

To create the connection asset, you need these connection details:

Database name
Hostname or IP address
Port number
SSL certificate (if required by the database server)

Credentials

Choose an authentication method:

Username and password
Username and Password to access the database in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.

Note:

Prerequisite for Entra ID authentication:

Microsoft Entra ID is a cloud-based identity and access management service. To obtain connection values for the Entra ID authentication method, sign in to the Microsoft Azure portal. For information about Entra ID, refer to the following Microsoft documentation:

Entra ID client secret credential

Client ID: The client ID for authorizing access to Microsoft Azure. To find the Client ID for your application, select Microsoft Entra ID. From App registrations, select your application. Click Copy to copy the Client ID of your application. For more information, see Register a Microsoft Entra app and create a service principal.
Client secret: The authentication key that is associated with the client ID for authorizing access to Microsoft Azure. To find the Client secret for your application, select Microsoft Entra ID. From App registrations, select your application. Go to Certificates & secrets > Client secrets. Click Copy to copy the existing Client secret or click New client secret to create a new Client secret and copy it. For more information, see Register a Microsoft Entra app and create a service principal.

Entra ID username password credential
Username and Password for the Microsoft Azure account.

For Private connectivity, to connect to a database that is not externalized to the internet (for example, behind a firewall), you must set up a secure connection.

If you connect with IBM Cloud Satellite, you need to set the Proxy connection policy on the Azure server in order to connect to the Azure SQL Database. For more information, see Azure SQL Database connectivity architecture.

Choose the method for creating a connection based on where you are in the platform

In a project: Click Assets > New asset > Connect to a data source. See Adding a connection to a project.
In a catalog: Click Add to catalog > Connection. See Adding a connection asset to a catalog.
In a deployment space: Click Import assets > Data access > Connection. See Adding data assets to a deployment space.
In the Platform assets catalog: Click New connection. See Adding platform connections.

Next step: Add data assets from the connection

Running SQL statements

To ensure that your SQL statements run correctly, refer to the Azure Synapse SQL documentation for the correct syntax.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics setup

Get started with Azure Synapse Analytics

Configuring lineage metadata import for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

When you create a metadata import for the Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics connection, you can set options specific to this data source, and define the scope of data for which lineage is generated. For details about metadata import, see Designing metadata imports.

Scope of lineage metadata import

Include and exclude lists: You can include or exclude assets up to the schema level. Provide databases and schemas in the format database/schema. Each part is evaluated as a regular expression. Assets which are added later in the data source will also be included or excluded if they match the conditions specified in the lists. Example values:

myDB/: all schemas in myDB database.
myDB2/.*: all schemas in myDB2 database.
myDB3/mySchema1: mySchema1 schema from myDB3 database.
myDB4/mySchema[1-5]: any schema in my myDB4 database with a name that starts with mySchema and ends with a digit between 1 and 5.

External inputs: If you use external Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics SQL scripts and T-SQL scripts which are not extracted directly from the connected database, you can add them in a ZIP file as an external input. You can organize the structure of a ZIP file as subfolders that represent databases and schemas. After the scripts are scanned, they are added under respective databases and schemas in the selected catalog or project. The ZIP file can have the following structure:

    <database_name>
        <schema_name>
           <script_name.sql>
    <database_name>
        <script_name.sql>
    <script_name.sql>
    replace.csv
    linkedServerConnectionsConfiguration.prm

The replace.csv file contains placeholder replacements for the scripts that are added in the ZIP file. For more information about the format, see Placeholder replacements.

The linkedServerConnectionsConfiguration.prm file contains linked server connection definitions. The following structure defines a single connection:

[{Shortcut_Name}] Type={connection_type}
Connection_String={connection_string}
Server_Name={server_name}
Database_Name={database_name}
Schema_Name={schema_name}
User_Name={user_name}

Advanced metadata import options

Extract extended attributes: You can extract extended attributes like primary key, unique and referential integrity constraints of columns. By default these attributes are not extracted.
Extraction mode: You can decide which extraction mode to run for the imported metadata. You have the following options:

Prefetch: use it for relational databases.
Parallel bulk: use it for analytical processing engines.
Single-thread: use it to avoid parallelism and large queries during extraction. When you select this mode, performance might be low.