Data Export Service
The Microsoft Data Export Service (DES) will reach its end-of-life support in November, 2022. For Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers that rely on this service to replicate data to an Azure SQL Database or SQL Server hosted on an Azure VM will need to make changes to their architecture.
Dynamics 365 customers have come to rely on the DES to Azure SQL for reporting and analytics. The most common use case we see is having the ability to easily query data in SQL, reporting via SSRS and dashboarding via Power-BI. The service upon initial setup, synchronizes your dataverse schema and applies delta changes as updates occur in real time.
The Solution - Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse
Microsoft offers the Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse as the alternative to the DES. The Azure synapse link is easy to manage from the Power Apps interface for all of your Dynamics 365 environments. In Power Apps, you’ll create a storage account and Synapse workspace linked to your environment. From there you can add tables and view the sync status of your data.
When your data lands in Azure Data Lake storage you’ll have the ability to query your data from external tables in a serverless pool from Synapse Studio or SSMS. You can perform data exploration, create ETL pipelines, connect to Power BI and even leverage tools such as AI and Machine Learning.
Making the Transition
While Microsoft advertises the ease of setting up the Synapse Link, there are challenges that your organization will likely face when making this transition. If you have previously built out robust reporting with embedded queries, views or stored procedures you might find it’s not as easy as lifting and shifting to Synapse. You’ll need to account for differences in data types, and address performance issues querying the dataverse external tables. Elev8 Technology Group can help you make the transition from setting up the Azure Synapse Link, creating ETL pipelines and leveraging Dedicated SQL Pools or Azure SQL for Enterprise Data Warehousing.