Intermediate2 days
Azure Data Explorer & KQL
Interactive analytics on telemetry, logs, and time-series data at scale
Overview
Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is an ultra-fast, fully managed analytics service built for exploring massive volumes of diverse data — logs, telemetry, IoT streams, and time-series data — in near real-time. At its core is the Kusto Query Language (KQL), a powerful and expressive query language also used in Azure Monitor and Microsoft Sentinel. This training takes you from cluster architecture and data ingestion through to advanced KQL, time-series analysis, anomaly detection, and integrations with Azure services and Power BI.
What you'll learn
- Provision and configure Azure Data Explorer clusters and databases
- Ingest data using batch, streaming, and event-driven ingestion patterns
- Write efficient KQL queries for filtering, aggregation, joins, and transformations
- Perform time-series analysis and anomaly detection using built-in KQL ML plugins
- Visualise ADX data in Power BI, Grafana, and the ADX Web UI dashboards
- Integrate ADX with Event Hubs, Azure Data Factory, and Microsoft Fabric
Programme
Day 1 — Architecture, ingestion & KQL fundamentals
- Azure Data Explorer overview: architecture, use cases, and cluster components
- Creating clusters and databases: sizing, SKUs, and cost optimisation
- Data ingestion methods: batch, streaming, LightIngest, and Event Hubs integration
- KQL fundamentals: where, project, extend, summarize, join, and render operators
- Working with time: datetime arithmetic, bin(), and time-series bucketing
- Hands-on: ingest a telemetry dataset from Event Hubs and run exploratory KQL queries
Day 2 — Advanced KQL, time-series & integrations
- Advanced KQL: parse, extract, mv-expand, and handling JSON and dynamic fields
- Time-series analysis: make-series, series_decompose, and seasonal trend detection
- Anomaly detection with series_decompose_anomalies and machine-learning plugins
- Visualisation: Power BI connector, Grafana integration, and ADX dashboards
- Integrating ADX with Azure Data Factory, Azure Monitor, and Microsoft Fabric
- Hands-on: build an end-to-end IoT analytics dashboard with real-time anomaly detection
Who is this for?
- Data engineers and analysts working with log, telemetry, or IoT data
- Operations teams exploring ADX for infrastructure and security analytics
- Developers building real-time monitoring and alerting solutions
- Teams using Azure Monitor or Microsoft Sentinel who want to master KQL
Prerequisites
- Basic SQL knowledge — KQL uses similar concepts but a distinct syntax
- Familiarity with cloud concepts and data ingestion pipelines
- No prior KQL or ADX experience required
Tools & technologies covered
Azure Data ExplorerKusto Query Language (KQL)ADX Web UIAzure Event HubsPower BIGrafanaAzure Data Factory
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