Azure Data Catalog - Register a data Source

Microsoft in the News

For you fellow SQL Server junkies, Microsoft recently announced a new preview for the next version of SQL Server Community Technology Preview (CTP).  When it is available, the new preview will allow you to schedule jobs using SQL Server Agent in SQL Sever v.Next on Linux.  You can keep up with the upcoming changes in SQL Server by visiting What’s New in SQL Server v.Next

 Register a data Source in Azure Data Catalog

When you get started with Azure Data Catalog, the first thing you must do is register a data source.  From the home screen choose Launch Application.

It will download a registration application program to your local drive. You will see the familiar install screen

How long it takes to download will depend on your connection, but since the file is only around 100MB, it shouldn’t take very long.

Accept the licence and you get a handy app that will walk you through to process of registering your data sources.

Sign in to begin.  Remember to use the same account you used to create your Data Catalog.

For this example, I chose a SQL Warehouse.

Enter the details of the Connection.

Here you select the objects you want to register.  The metadata for the objects will be registered in the Catalog.  For Sources that support previews you can choose to include a 20-record snapshot of the objects data.  I recommend including that; if it is available.

 Select the Database and then you can choose the objects.  The “>>” arrow will move all objects to the “objects to be registered” column.  I like to include preview and profile to get the most out of my data.  The Preview allows you to preview a sample of the data if you have permission to the underlying data.  The profile will gather as much detail about each object as is available.  I find this feature will fill in as much detail as it can find about my source and limits the amount of typing I have to do later to add that detail.

Note:  Just above the REGISTER button you can add tags separated by commas.   This allows you to start documenting as you load. 

Note:  Every comment you enter goes against all objects.  Ensure the comment is relevant to all objects before you enter it.

As soon as you choose REGISTER, the service begins.  Once your objects are registered, you can choose to register more objects by simply going back to the Register Page and selecting more objects.  You can also do this in the view portal.

In my next blog, I will begin to Explore the Data Catalog.