Authentication
All the different ways to authenticate to Azure SQL, Synapse, and Fabric
9 minutes
In this post I’ll go over all the details on acquiring access tokens to authenticate to any Microsoft SQL engine, including Azure SQL, Azure Synapse and Microsoft Fabric. We’ll explore users, service principals, managed identities, and Fabric Workspace Identity. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re looking to get programmatic access to your database / data warehouse, you’ll need to authenticate. In 2025, more often than not, you’ll be using Microsoft Entra ID to do so and this is where the fun begins.