How is Bigdata handled, RDBMS or NoSQL?

 Here is a reasonable article comparing SQL vs. NoSQL. Here you can also look up the differences between RDBMS and Document Databases. 

https://phoenixnap.com/kb/sql-vs-nosql

While Amazon has its own DocumentDB, MongoDB is used in a lot of places (Forbes, Toyota, etc) and Amazon's DocumentDB is compatible with MongoDB. 

Of course, Microsoft's SQL Server is a mature product and it can even handle BigData using Polybase virtualization. You can query data from any SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and other data sources using external tables. 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/big-data-cluster/big-data-options?view=sql-server-ver16

Connectivity to HDFS now uses published REST APIs instead of the Java Hadoop client. all you need to do is to configure connectors while configuring the AZURE Storage.

Here is a schematic from Microsoft's documentation of BigData storage and processing in the Microsoft platform.

Also, storing data in itself is not sufficient and Microsoft has POWER BI which also visualization of data from a huge number of database products. It is hard to beat Microsoft at this game.

I am somewhat slanted towards Microsoft due to my association with Microsoft database products for a long time. I have not received any remuneration from Microsoft for this post.

What is Azure Data Lake?

Recently announced Azure Data Lake addresses the big data  3V challenges; volume, velocity and variety. It is one more storage feature in addition to blobs and SQL Azure database. Azure Data Lake (should have been Azure Data Ocean IMHO) is really omnipotent. Just look at the key capabilities of Azure Data Lake:

Any Data
Native format, distributed data store. No need to pre-define schema information. From unstructured to structured data handling.

Any Size
Kilo bytes to Exa bytes OK. Ready for read/write.

At any scale
Scale to match your needs; high volume data handling of small writes and low latency. Can Aaddress near real-time web analytics scenarios.

HDFS Compatible
Works out-of-the box with Hadoop including services such as HD Insight

Full integration with Azure Active Directory
Supporting identity and access management over all of the data.

Azure Data Lake Store  is therefore a hyper-scale HDFS repositiory designed specifically for big data analytics in the cloud. It is order made for IoT and thorughput-intensive analytics for high volume data.

Read more here.
The graphic is from a  Microsoft Technet site
I checked out the preview portal (https://portal.azure.com/), I do not see it. Possible by the end of the year.

Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu: Introduction to Structured Query Language

This was offered once I 2012 and once in the beginning of the year and was a total success. It is offered once again to those who could not make it.

Please register at the PCATT.ORG site.

New in 2015: You will also get an introduction to Windows PowerShell. SQL Server 2012 Express will be used.
For details you can also write to:
Hodentek@live.com with course name in the Subject line.