What are Azure Open Datasets and how can you use them?

Azure Open Datasets curated public datasets that you can use to add scenario-specific features to machine learning solutions for more accurate models. Open Datasets are in the cloud on Microsoft Azure and are integrated into Azure Machine Learning and readily available to Azure Databricks and Machine Learning Studio (classic). You can also access the datasets through APIs and use them in other products, such as Power BI and Azure Data Factory.

Curated and prepared datasets

Data scientists often spend the majority of their time cleaning and preparing data for advanced analytics. Open Datasets are copied to the Azure cloud and preprocessed to save you time. At regular intervals data is pulled from the sources, such as by an FTP connection to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Next, data is parsed into a structured format, and then enriched as appropriate with features such as ZIP Code or location of the nearest weather station.

Access to datasets

In Azure account, you can access open datasets using code or through the Azure service interface. The data is colocated with Azure cloud compute resources for use in your machine learning solution.

Open Datasets are available through the Azure Machine Learning UI and SDK. Open Datasets also provides Azure Notebooks and Azure Databricks notebooks you can use to connect data to Azure Machine Learning and Azure Databricks. Datasets can also be accessed through a Python SDK.