With the new ‘browse Azure’ functionality in Get Data, you can easily browse all your Azure resources and automatically connect to them, without going through manually setting up a connection, saving you a lot of time.
Using the regular path in Get Data to create a new connection, you always need to fill in your endpoint, URL or server and database name when connecting to Azure resources like Azure Blob, Azure Data Lake gen2 and Synapse. This is a bit of a tedious process and does not allow for easy data discovery.
Supported data sources
- Azure Blob
- Azure Data Lake gen 2
- Synapse
Required access
To browse the Azure resources, you need at least Reader access role on the data source. To be able to connect to the resource with OAuth, you need at least Storage Blob Data Reader role on the data source. For more information on access roles learn more.
How to browse Azure resources
From the Geta Data experience, navigate to the Azure module.
From here, you will land into the browse Azure module.
Your connection to Azure is through your organizational account that you are logged in with in Fabric. You can use the left navigation pane to filter your Azure subscriptions and resource groups. The search bar at the top will let you easily search across all your resources. To filter by resource type, use the filter icon in the top right corner.
Connect to Synapse resource
To connect to Synapse resource, simply navigate to the resource you need and select by clicking on the name:
You will see a status bar appear in the right corner of the experience. The connection is automatically created or selected for you and you will be brought into the navigation screen. For more information on the connection creation logic, see the section below.
Connect to Blob or Data Lake gen 2 resource
To connect to Blob or Data Lake resource, simply navigate to the Storage account resource you need and select by clicking on the name.
You will need to choose if your resource is a Azure Blob or a Data Lake storage resource. If you connect through the wrong connector, this will result in an error. If you are not sure if your resource is an Azure Blob or Data Lake, you can easily check this in the Azure portal. To do so, navigate to your resource in the Azure portal and check if the Hierarchal namespace is enabled.
Enabled: Azure Data Lake Storage
Disabled: Azure Blob
Automatic connection creating deep dive
When selecting an Azure resource, you see the connection being done behind the scenes. In this deep dive, it is explained what will happen behind the scenes. There are a few different scenario’s:
- You do not have a connection to this resource
- You have exactly 1 connection to this resource
- You have multiple connections to this resource
- There was an error during creating or selecting the connection
You do not have a connection to this resource
When you select a resource and you do not already have a connection to this resource, a connection using your OAuth that is displayed on the browse Azure screen is automatically created. If you do not want to use OAuth to create the connection, but an other authentication type, like Key or SAS, you can use the regular create new connection experience to create this connection. Next time you use the Browse Azure experience, you will get the behavior explained below when you have exactly 1 connection to this resource.
You have exactly 1 connection to this resource
When you select a resource that has exactly 1 connection to this resource, this connection will be used. It does not matter in this case if it is OAuth or not, a connection with any authentication type will be used in this case. If you do not want this connection to be used, you can use the regular create new connection experience to create the correct connection.
You have multiple connections to this resource
When you select a resource that has multiple connections to this resource, a pop-up window will appear. Within this window you can select the connection you want to use or create a new connection.
There was an error during creating or selecting the connection
An error can occur when the connection that is being created or selected does not have the right permissions on the data source. A pop-up window will show up, so you can either edit the connection or create a new connection. Make sure that if you are using OAuth that you have at least Storage Blob Data Reader access on the data source.
