From SQL to KQL via Azure Data Explorer

23/01/2025

Abstract

We all know (and love) our SQL, the Structured Query Language. Some of us have been writing SQL queries for decades. But there’s a relatively new kid on the block: KQL, the Kusto Query Language. A powerful tool to explore data, discover patterns and anomalies, even analyze streaming data and time series. It’s also the language used to query the Azure log databases and your IoT sensor data.

In this session you’ll get to know the most important elements of KQL: tables, queries and the pipe, visualizations and dashboards. We’ll see what it has in common with SQL and what the differences are. We’ll learn our ways to get from SQL to KQL.

One possible tool of choice to get going with KQL is ADX, the Azure Data Explorer (others are the KQL extension for Azure Data Studio or the Kusto.Explorer). For the practical parts of this session we’ll use ADX with the free cluster option as our environment to ingest, analyze and visualize our data.

Speakers

Thomas Hütter

Senior Developer for ERP, SQL scripts, BI stuff

Explorer of Things

Thomas holds a degree in Business Economics, but has been a data explorer and a developer at heart ever since the days of dBase and Turbo Pascal. He touched his first SQL Server at V6.5, used covering indexes before they became a feature and joined the PASS community in 2006.Thomas has been developing in Navision/Dynamics/Business Central systems for quite some time (since 2001, one year before MS acquired Navision), got his hands on R in 2014 (the year before MS bought Revolution Analytics), on the Power Platform from 2020 and the Arduino world from 2024 on. He has worked for ISVs as well as end-user companies, as a developer, consultant, accidental data engineer and is an author for data-related articles as well as a speaker at data events across Europe.