Azure Data Lake
Azure Data Lake is a cloud-based data storage and analytics platform from Microsoft, designed for big data workloads. It provides a scalable repository for storing structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data of any size, and integrates with Azure services like Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics for processing and analysis. It supports high-throughput data ingestion and is optimized for parallel processing using frameworks like Apache Spark.
Developers should learn Azure Data Lake when building data-intensive applications, such as real-time analytics, machine learning pipelines, or large-scale data warehousing in the Azure ecosystem. It is particularly useful for scenarios requiring petabyte-scale storage, such as IoT data streams, log analytics, or genomic research, where traditional databases are insufficient. Its integration with Azure services makes it ideal for enterprises already using Microsoft's cloud platform.