Stored Procedure

Azure Data Factory – Stored Procedure activity

Mitchell PearsonLeave a comment

Welcome to part two of my blog series on Azure Data Factory. In the first post I discussed the get metadata activity in Azure Data Factory. Now you are going to see how to use the output parameter from the get metadata activity and load that into a table on Azure SQL Database.

Check out part one here: Azure Data Factory – Get Metadata Activity

Design Pattern_Blog Image

In this blog post you are going to learn the following:

  1. How to execute a stored procedure in Azure Data Factory.
  2. How to use the output parameters from the Get Metadata task as input parameters for a stored procedure.

Setting up the Stored Procedure Activity in Azure Data Factory

I am going to pick up where I left on in the last blog and add the stored procedure activity to my existing pipeline.

  1. Add the stored procedure activity to the pipeline, it’s found under “General”.
  2. Next, connect the two activities, the stored procedure will only execute following a successful completion of the get metadata activity.

1_Connect Activities

  1. Click on the stored procedure activity to get to the properties window and then click on “SQL Account”.
  2. Under SQL account select the linked service to your Azure SQL Database. If you haven’t already created a linked service, click + new to create a new one.

2_SQL Account

  1. Now click the “Stored Procedure” tab in the properties window.
  2. Choose your stored procedure from the dropdown menu. This dropdown will display all stored procedures on your Azure SQL DB. The stored procedure in this blog is inserting the modified date of the file into a table.
  3. Click on import parameter. This will import any parameters found in your stored procedure. Notice that the parameter ModifiedDate is returned in the parameter list.

3_Stored Procedure

Dynamically setting the Value

The last step is to now pass a value into the parameter ModifiedDate so that the table can be properly updated. The Modified Date value produced from the Get Metadata activity is the value we want to pass into the stored procedure. You can manually type in the output parameter reference or you can use the option to add dynamic content.

  • Add dynamic content by either clicking the hyperlink “add dynamic content [Alt + P]” or by clicking in the Value box and then using the hotkey [Alt + P].

4_Add Dynamic Content

  1. Scroll to the very bottom of this dynamic content list and then click “Get Metadata1” under activity outputs. Unfortunately, this does not generate the full expression for returning the last modified date of the property. We still need to specify which output we want here.
  2. Complete the expression by adding .lastModified.
  3. Click Finish.

Tip:  Getting the exact name of the output parameter can be challenging, we discussed how to find the property name in the get metadata blog post. If you missed that blog, or forgot, now would be a good time to go back and do a quick review.

5_output_lastModified

As the last step, debug and test your pipeline! Thanks for reading this blog and please check back often!

Azure Data Factory – Get Metadata Activity

Mitchell Pearson1 Comment

Welcome to part one of a new blog series I am beginning on Azure Data Factory. In this first post I am going to discuss the get metadata activity in Azure Data Factory. In this post you are going to see how to use the get metadata activity to retrieve metadata about a file stored in Azure Blob storage and how to reference the output parameters of that activity. In part two of this blog series I am going to show you how to use the stored procedure activity to load the metadata information into a table in Azure SQL Database. Take a look at the below design pattern:

Design Pattern_Blog Image

In this blog post you are specifically going to learn the following three items:

  1. Set up and configuration of the activity.
  2. How to read the outputs.
  3. How to reference output parameters from the Get Metadata activity.

Part 1: Setting up the Get Metadata activity.

First, I am going to create a new pipeline and then add the Get Metadata activity to the pipeline.

1_NewPipeline_GetMetadata

Next, I am going to set up and configure the activity to read from a file I have in Azure Blob storage.

Please note, for this post I assume you know how to create a dataset in Azure Data Factory. If you do not, kindly let me know and I can throw together a quick blog on how that is done!

  • With the Get Metadata activity selected, complete the following tasks:
    1. Click on Dataset in the property window.
    2. Select your dataset from the dropdown, or create a new one that points to your file.
    3. Select the property Last Modified from the fields list.
    4. Select the property Size from the fields list.
    5. Select any other properties you would like to get information about.

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Part two: How to read the outputs from Get Metadata activity

Now that the activity has been configured, it’s time to run it in debug mode to validate the output parameters.

3_Debug

Once debug completes you can now take a look at the output of the debug execution for any of the activities in your pipeline. We only have the one activity in this example. Click on the output to see the output values for the items selected:

Tip: If you don’t see the output of the debug operation, click in the background of the pipeline to deselect any activities that may be selected. The output of the debug operation is a property on the pipeline, not any particular activity.

4_Outputs

Part 3: How to reference the output parameters

For me, this was the hard part, I discovered early on that there is no “Output Parameter” option defined on any of the activities, this is something I just expected since I come from a background of SQL and SSIS. However, not all is lost, you will find that referencing these output parameters is not that difficult and they have a basic pattern you can work with. But that will come after we cover the basics!

For now, let’s take a look at the basic pattern:

@activity(‘Get Metadata1’).output

This pattern can be broken down into three basic parts.

  1. @activity – specifies you are getting information from an activity in the pipeline.
  2. ‘Get Metadata1’ – This is the name of the activity that you want to get information from.
  3. .output – you are looking for an output from the specified activity.

Unfortunately this part is not complete, now you have to specify exactly which output parameter you want, and you have to figure out how to call that parameter. For example, do you want to retrieve the Last Modified date or the Size? what specific name do you use to call that parameter? For example, @activity(‘Get Metadata1’).output.Last Modified won’t work because Last Modified is the incorrect name of the output parameter, so the challenge now is figuring out what that output parameter name is so you can use that somewhere else in your pipeline.

So how do you get the specific name of the output parameters?

You can get the specific name of the output parameters by taking a look at the output results of the Debug operation. Take another look at the output results and you will see the exact name needed for the output parameter reference. Last Modified is going to be lastModified and the final code to reference the output parameter will look like the following:

@activity(‘Get Metadata1’).output.lastModified

5_ParameterNames

As always, thanks for checking out my blog! Be sure to check out the other blogs in this series to get a better understanding of how to use use the output parameter in other activities.