Azure Data Lake Storage vs. Azure SQL Database

Azure Data Lake storage is well suited for applications/use cases within organizations where capturing and storing large amounts of data in any format is required, primarily for storing and processing purposes. It's an easy and cost-effective cloud solution for your application data. The ability to integrate with other Azure Services like Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory is superb.

Incentivized

Your upcoming app can be built faster on a fully managed SQL database and can be moved into Azure with a few to no application code changes. Flexible and responsive server less computing and Hyperscale storage can cope with your changing requirements and one of the main benefits is the reduction in costs, which is noticeable.

Incentivized

• Azure Data Lake Storage is extremely scalable. It allows us to scale up or down endlessly based on what we need including replication.
• In terms of security, Azure Data Lake Storage fits our requirements really well as we can monitor and encrypt seamlessly. We can also assign permissions through roles and grant network-level access.
• Due to the fact that it can scale, we are able to monitor the cost of storage and any given time and make financial decisions about our infrastructure based on how small or big we want to scale.

Incentivized

• Scalability is #1: if it used to be an almost no-win endeavour to try to modernize your server or migrate to other hardware, with Azure SQL Database it becomes a press of a button.
• All the tools simply work after you are on Azure SQL Database.
• The applications do not need changes in order to start using Azure SQL Database.
• Hybrid Cloud scenarios will work.
• Clustering and failover - already there.
• You can start monitoring the use and extract performance insights in a new way in Azure.

Incentivized

• I'd like to see a better cross-platform native client. Azure Data Explorer is fine, but it's far from the "SSMS" kind of experience SQL Server users are used to.
• Listing a large number of file is somewhat problematic and slow. Using the native C# library, running directly on an Azure VM, it can take several hours to list just a couple million files.
• Switching from V1 to V2 requires the creation of a new Storage Account and that's pretty inconvenient.

Incentivized

• A little slow on processing complex or large Views. We use a lot of Views to feed our BI system, and the processing time could see some improvement, IMHO.
• Additional monitoring components would be nice too, automating some built in performance measurement tools would be a nice feature.
• Price can always be improved as well. It’s not bad, but room for improvement.

Incentivized

This is best solution as a DBA one could expect from a service provider and as a cloud service, it removes all your hassles.

Incentivized

The interfaces are intuitive once you are familiar with all the functions. The ability to use different tools to interact with the platform, such as directly via a browser or code editors such as VS Code or Visual Studio is a great option and allows for integrating withn the project and other testing and developing tools.

Incentivized

We give the support a high rating simply because every time we've had issues or questions, representatives were in contact with us quickly. Without fail, our issues/questions were handled in a timely matter. That kind of response is integral when client data integrity and availability is in question. There is also a wealth of documentation for resolving issues on your own.

Incentivized

The Azure Data Lake solution is designed for organizations that want to take advantage of big data. It provides a data platform that can help developers, data scientists, and analysts store data of any size and format and perform all types of processing and analytics across multiple platforms and programming languages. It can work with your existing solutions, such as identity management and security solutions. It also integrates with other data warehouses and cloud environments. It can be useful for organizations that need the above softwares.

Incentivized

I selected Azure SQL because it integrates nicely with the technology stacks we currently maintain. The pricing is right, and clients are happy with that. Scaling is easy. Most of our clients don't want to maintain a full-blown database server, and they don't need one. For them, Azure SQL is the right size.

Incentivized

• The cost can be high for more advanced work. In some cases, for instance, time limits and lab runtimes may be too short if you are too slow to learn what is explained as you go along.
• promote flexible team communication. You can create different spaces for different teams, and share files and tasks.

Incentivized

• Positive: very easy implementation!
• Positive: finally a good (easy) implementation of data masking, something we always neglected on premise.
• Positive: no maintenance!! No "server is down" messages on your phone at 3 'o clock in the morning.
• Negative: Too expensive to use for all other scenario's than a few very important applications.

Incentivized