Connect to Azure SQL Database (Beta)

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This documentation describes a public beta feature and is under construction. This documentation should not be considered part of our published documentation until this notice, and the corresponding Beta flag on the feature in the Sigma service, are removed. As with any beta feature, the feature discussed below is subject to quick, iterative changes. The latest experience in the Sigma service might differ from the contents of this document.

Beta features are subject to the Beta features disclaimer.

Sigma supports secure connections to Azure SQL Database.

This document explains how to connect your Sigma organization to your Azure SQL Database.

Requirements

• You must be assigned the Admin account type.
• You must have appropriate access in Azure to configure your database network settings.
• You must have a supported instance type. See Verify my instance type.

Verify my instance type

To verify your instance type, run the following query on your database instance:

select serverproperty('ProductMajorVersion'),serverproperty('EngineEdition')")

Instances with an EngineEdition of 5 are supported.

If your EngineEdition is 1, 2, 3, 4 or 8, or if yourProductMajorVersion is 16.x, use the SQL Server 2022 connection. See Connect to SQL Server 2022.

For information on interpreting the query output, see the Microsoft documentation on SERVERPROPERTY.

Create an Azure SQL Database connection

1. Click the user icon at the top right of your screen.
   The user icon is usually composed of your initials.

2. In the drop-down menu, select Add connection. The Add new connection page appears.

3. In the Connection Details section, specify the following:

   Name	Enter a Name for the new connection. Sigma displays this name in the connection list.
   Type	Select the Azure SQL DB tile.

4. You must configure your Azure database network settings to allow Sigma IP addresses. To do this, refer to the Azure documentation on Network Access Controls. The necessary Sigma IPs can be found under the Server field in the Connection Credentials section.

5. In the Connection Credentials section, specify the following:

   Server	A fully qualified hostname or IP address. Refer to the Microsoft documentation on how to Get server connection information.
   Database	The name of the database you want to query.
   Port	The port through which Sigma can connect to your Azure SQL Database cluster. The default port is 1433.
   User	The username of the service account set up by your Azure SQL Database administrator.
   Password	The password of the service account set up by your Azure SQL Database administrator.

6. In the Connection Features section, specify the following:

   Connection Timeout	The time before timeout (or cancellation), in seconds, that Sigma waits for the query to return results. The default is 120, or 2 minutes. The maximum is 600, or 10 minutes.
   Use friendly names	This setting, which is on by default, makes column names from the data source more readable. For example, a database column ORDER_NUMBER appears as Order Number.

7. Click Browse Connection, then click Add permission to grant data access for users in your organization.

   

8. Use the navigation in the left panel to explore the schemas and tables in your connection. The new connection will also appear in the list of connections you have in your account.

   

Feature Limitations

Currently, Azure SQL Database connections don’t support the following features:

• Dataset warehouse views created in Sigma
• Workbook warehouse views
• Export to cloud storage
• OAuth connections
• Sigma result IDs cache
• User attributes for role and warehouse switching
• Write-back features: CSV uploads, Input tables
• Geography data type
• All Geography functions: Area, Centroid, Distance, Geography, Intersects, Json, Latitude, Longitude, MakeLine, MakePoint, Perimeter, Text, Within
• The following Passthrough functions (including Call and Agg variations): Geography, Variant, Logical
• The following Window functions: CumulativeCorr, MovingCorr, Corr
• Custom SQL containing CTE's
• Sample connections