Introduction

In a previous article, we learned how to work with PowerShell in Azure using the Cloud Shell. In this new article we will learn to work with Bash in the Cloud Shell.

What is Bash?

It is a UNIX shell created by Brian Fox for the GNU project to replace Bourne shell. It was created 1989. It was distributed in many Linux distributors and Mac. If you worked with UNIX/Linux or Mac, you may be familiar with Bash. If you are not, this article is for you. We will give a brief introduction for newbies.

We will show how to create a hello world, use variables, system variables, loops and then we will create an ASDW database.

Requirements

1. An Azure Account 

Getting started

At the top right of the Azure Portal click the >_ icon this icon will open the Cloud Shell:

Select bash as your shell:

Hello world example

Let's start with a simple Hello world. You can use the echo command and the message to send a Hello world:

echo 'Hello world'

System variables

In bash, you have some system variables that you can use. For example, the $USER will display the name of the bash user:

echo $USER

The next command will show a random number:

echo $RANDOM

$HOSTNAME shows the name of the host where bash is executed:

echo $HOSTNAME

Working with variables

The following example shows how to store a string in a variable and display the value:

myname='daniel'
echo $myname

How to concatenate strings

myname='daniel'
greetings ='hello'
echo $greetings $myname

How to get the current date

The following example shows the current date:

mydate=`date`
echo $mydate

This shows how to add two numbers. The following example adds 6+7:

TOTAL=`expr 6 + 7`
echo $TOTAL

How to catch user input

The read command is used to read user input. The pound (#) sign indicates a comment.

read yourname
#write your name
echo $yourname

Creating an Azure SQL Data Warehouse in Bash

Now that we played with Bash, we are ready to work in ASDW. We first need to create a Resource Group in Azure. The following example will create a resource group, named bashsqlcentralgroup, in the Central United States:

az group create -l centralus -n bashsqlcentralgroup

Working with for loops

The following example will create 5 Azure Resource Groups named bashsqlcentralgroup1, bashsqlcentralgroup2, etc:

for i in {1..5}
do
   az group create -l centralus -n bashsqlcentralgroup$i
done

You can verify the Resouce Groups in the Azure Portal using the Resource Group selection:

You can see all our resource groups were created:

How to create an Azure SQL Server

Once that you have the resource group, you can create your Azure SQL Server we will first store the password in a variable named pwd:

read pwd
#Enter your password

We will now create an Azure SQL Server in Central United States named sqlcentralbashsrv in the resource group already created using the administrative user daniel with the password stored in the pwd variable:

az sql server create --location centralus --name sqlcentralbashsrv --resource-group bashsqlcentralgroup --admin-password $pwd --admin-user daniel

How to create an Azure SQL Data Warehouse Database

To create an Azure SQL Data Warehouse database, you need an Azure SQL Server and an Azure Resource Group created (explained before). The following command will create an ASDW database named sqlcentraldb in the resource group bashsqlcentralgroup in the server sqlcentralbashsrv with the Performance Tier DW100:

az sql dw create --name sqlcentraldb --resource-group bashsqlcentralgroup --server  sqlcentralbashsrv --service-objective DW100

Conclusion

In this chapter, we show how to work with bash. We learned how to create our hello world with Bash, work with variables, loops and then we learned how to create a resource group, an Azure SQL Server and an Azure Resource Group.

References

For more information, refer to these links:

• Introduction to Bash
• Bash scripting Tutorial
• az group create
• az sql server create
• az sql dw create