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112 Million Cab Rides In Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Derik Hammer wants a real test of Azure SQL Data Warehouse:

The method that I liked the most and finally settled on was to use a public dataset. I wanted data which was skewed in real ways and did not require a lot of work to massage. Microsoft has a great listing of public datasets here.

I decided to go with the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) Trip Record Data. Data is available for most taxi and limousine fares with pickup/drop-off and distance information between January 2009 and June 2018. This includes data for Yellow cab, Green cab, and for hire vehicles. Just the Yellow cab data from 01/2016 – 06/2018 is over 112,000,000 records (24 GBs) and they download into easy to import comma separated values (CSV) files.

Read on to see how you can set it up yourself.  As Derik points out at the end, though, this is still one big table, but there are a few columns which can lead to dimensions, things like rate code, location, and payment type.