title: Load data from Databricks to Azure Analysis Services (AAS)
body: <h2>Objective</h2>
  <p>I'm storing data as Delta Lake format at ADLS gen2. Also they are available through Hive catalog.
  It's important to notice that we're currently using PowerBI, but in future we may switch to Excel over AAS.</p>
  <h2>Question</h2>
  <p><em>What is the best way (or hack) to connect AAS to my ADLS gen2 data in Delta Lake format?</em></p>
  <h2>The issue</h2>
  <p>There are no Databricks/Hive among <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/analysis-services/analysis-services-datasource" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AAS supported sources</a>. AAS supports ADLS gen2 through Blob connector, but AFAIK, it doesn't support Delta Lake format, only parquet.</p>
  <h2>Possible solution</h2>
  <p>From this <a href="https://www.bluegranite.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-a-real-world-databricks-implementation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article</a> I see that the issue may be potentially solved with <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-onprem" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PowerBI on-premise API gateway</a>:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>One example is the integration between Azure Analysis Services (AAS)
  and Databricks; Power BI has a native connector to Databricks, but
  this connector hasn’t yet made it to AAS. To compensate for this, we
  had to deploy a Virtual Machine with the Power BI Data Gateway and
  install Spark drivers in order to make the connection to Databricks
  from AAS. This wasn’t a show stopper, but we’ll be happy when AAS has
  a more native Databricks connection.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The issue with this solution is that we're planning to stop using PowerBI. I don't quite understand how it works, what PBI license and implementation/maintenance efforts it requires. <em>Could you please provide deeper insight on how it'll work?</em></p>
  <h2>UPD, 26 Dec 2020</h2>
  <p>Now, when <a href="https://www.jamesserra.com/archive/2020/12/azure-synapse-analytics-is-ga/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Azure Synapse Analytics is GA</a>, it has full support of SQL on-demand. That means that serverless Synapse may theoretically be used as a glue between AAS and Delta Lake. See <a href="https://medium.com/@giangnt2/directly-reading-delta-lake-data-from-azure-synapse-8b911dce2bcd" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;Direct Query Databricks' Delta Lake from Azure Synapse&quot;</a>.</p>
  <p>In the same time, is that possible to query Databricks Catalog (internal/external) from Synapse on-demand using ODBC? Synapse <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-external-data-source-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15&amp;tabs=dedicated" rel="nofollow noreferrer">supports ODBC as external source</a>.</p>