A while ago I wrote a blog post about Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Power BI which I explained how to install a new instance of Azure SQL Data Warehouse and how to visualise your Azure SQL DW data in Power BI. In this post I explain how to query an Azure SQL DW in SSMS and Visual Studio.

Requirements

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Visual Studio (2013 or 2015)
Latest release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2016 (Currently 13.0.15600.2)
An existing instance of an Azure SQL Data Warehouse. If you don’t have an existing one check this out

Querying Azure SQL Data Warehouse from Visual Studio

Prior the latest release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2016, the only available tool for querying an Azure SQL Data Warehouse was SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Visual Studio 2013 or 2015. Here is how you can use SSDT 2015 to query an Azure SQL Data Warehouse:

Open SQL Server Data Tools 2015
Click “SQL Object Explorer” from View menu

Click “Add SQL Server”

Enter “Server Name”
If you don’t recall server name then open a web browser and log into Azure portal
Click “SQL databases”
Click any desired Azure SQL Data Warehouse you created before. Make sure the database is “Online”