U-SQL Tables vs SQL Data Warehouse

Question

So here's where I'm at.

I'm storing huge amounts of data in Data Lake Store. But when I want to make a report (it can be a month's worth), I want to schematize it into a table to refer to over and over again when querying upon it.

Should I just use the built in database feature that Data Lake Analytics provides by creating U-SQL tables (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt621301.aspx) or should I create this table in SQL Data Warehouse? I guess what I really want to know is what are the pros and cons of either case and when is it best to use either?

By the way, I'm a noob in this Microsoft Azure world. Still actively learning.

Answer 1

At this point it depends on what you want to do with the data.

If you need interactive report queries, then moving the data into a SQL DB or DW schema is recommended at this point until ADLA provides interactive query capabilities.

If you need the tables during your data preparation steps, want to use partitioning to manage data life cycles, need to run U-SQL queries that can benefit from the clustering and data distribution offered by U-SQL tables, you should use U-SQL tables.