RevoScaleR on Azure Synapse or Databricks

Jeremy Otsap 1

Is this possible? I know the RevoScaleR package runs on SQL; is there any roadmap plans or workaround hacks to get it running on either Databricks and/or Synapse?

PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-04T08:07:24.18+00:00

Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

Thanks for the ask and also for using the Microsoft Q&A forum.

We are reaching out to the internal team to get more help on this, I will update you once we hear back from them.
PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-05T07:36:54.683+00:00

Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

We are still waiting for a response from the product team. I will let you know once I heard back from the product team.

Stay Tuned!
PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-08T07:05:44.143+00:00
Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

Unfortunately, we don’t support RevoScaleR in Synapse and we do not have R language support at this time.

How you are using RevoScaleR today, could you please share more details on your scenario?

Are these legacy R scripts that you want to avoid re-writing or are you continuously developing using RevoScale?

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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Jeremy Otsap 1 Reputation point

2021-02-09T02:37:27.447+00:00

Its more of what I'd like to do, if possible. Bit of background we are a Microsoft CSP and consultancy. Our data estate modernization GTM leverages Azure Synapse; in fact I'd say its pretty core to the offering we've developed. Now in the meantime we've leveraged SQL 2017 w/ the ML services to run RevoScaleR scripts in stored procedures. We'd ideally like to keep all that work, and just move it to Synapse, thus allowing the work to be centralized as well. I.e. sharing notebooks, etc.

Is there a better way? Is there anything on the roadmap? Honestly I've invested a HUGE amount of time developing RevoScaleR expertise, and I really do not want that to goto waste. I realize the industry is more focused on Spark and Python, but I'm looking to leverage what I can.

Any advice greatly appreciated
PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-09T04:22:47.3+00:00

Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

Thanks for sharing the details.

We are reaching out to the internal team to get more help on this, I will update you once we hear back from them.
PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-17T11:42:38.71+00:00

Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

Are you willing to leverage SQL Managed Instance in the Azure for their Revolution Analytics use cases? Since you already using SQL 2017 with ML Services, MI would pretty much be a lift and shift for these specific workloads. And from Synapse, the output from MI could be consumed for analytics.
Jeremy Otsap 1 Reputation point

2021-02-20T00:31:34.417+00:00

Certainly for the operationalizing of the analytical pipeline, that will certainly work. But as far as the integrated workspace experience, there's a big miss. Should we assume Microsoft isn't further investing in integrating the RevoScaleR packages w/ future products?

Look at it this way, a lot of time and resources were spent developing that expertise and adopting the technology, etc. Certainly the R community is still fairly large. And it wasn't that long ago since Microsoft's data teams were promoting RevoScaler. We're talking 2016 / 2017

I guess overall I'm just unclear what to do? What Microsoft's formal prescriptive guidance is? Do we move away from RevoScaleR?
PRADEEPCHEEKATLA-MSFT 76,921 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-02-22T04:53:51.34+00:00

Hello @Jeremy Otsap ,

Thanks for sharing the details.

We are reaching out to the internal team to get more help on this, I will update you once we hear back from them.
KranthiPakala-MSFT 46,422 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-03-04T18:44:02.18+00:00

Hi @Jeremy Otsap ,

Apologizes for the delay in response. As we haven't received relevant information from internal team related to your last query, we would suggest you to please file a support ticket to have a 1:1 with one of the engineer who can help to involve product team to discuss further on the same.

In case if you don't have a support plan, please send an email to AzCommunity[at]Microsoft[dot]com with the below details, so that we can enable a one-time-free support for your subscription to work closely on this matter.

Email subject: <Attn - Kranthi : Microsoft Q&A Thread title>
Thread URL: <Microsoft Q&A Thread>
Subscription ID: <your subscription id>

Looking forward to your response.

Thank you
Jeremy Otsap 1 Reputation point

2021-03-04T18:54:49.203+00:00

Yeah even had a chance to ask Nellie Gustafsson at Ignite the other day, and even she doesn't have a clear answer. I really hope the RevoScaleR packages don't end up dying; they were really something special that Microsoft had. I actually taught over a dozen of my fellow students how to use in my Data Science Masters program as we worked on projects together

Last request: architecture documentation that shows best practices for integrating SQL Managed Instance into a Synapse flow. I'm assuming it would be the same as Data Factory? Can you just provide a couple URLs that I can take as my homework?
KranthiPakala-MSFT 46,422 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-03-04T19:24:33.563+00:00
Thanks for sharing your inputs from Ignite.
I wasn't able to find the relevant architecture doc, but below are few closest to your request. Please have a look at them.

Copy and transform data in Azure SQL Managed Instance by using Azure Data Factory

https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/reference-architectures/data/cluedin

https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/browse/?expanded=azure&products=azure-sql-managed-instance

https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/browse/?expanded=azure&products=azure-synapse-analytics

If you have further questions regarding these topics, I would request you to please open a new thread as these topics are different from the original query of this thread :)

Have a good day!