Does U-SQL allow custom code to call external services

Question

In U-SQL custom code (code behind or Assemblies) can external services be called e.g. bing search or map.

Thanks, Nasir

Answer 1

This is currently not supported for the following reason:

Imagine that you write a UDF or UDO (e.g., an extractor) that calls a REST endpoint of a service that is used to get a few calls per minute from the same originating IP address. But now you execute this user code in a U-SQL job that is scaled out over millions of rows, running possibly on hundreds of vertices concurrently. This is a - hopefully unintended - distributed denial of service attack against that service. And it most likely will lead to that service experiencing an outage and our IP ranges getting blocked.

Thus, we are currently closing off our containers and recommend that you use other mechanisms (like getting a data set for coordinate translations) instead.