How to configure an Expectation store in Azure blob storage¶

By default, newly profiled Expectations are stored in JSON format in the expectations/ subdirectory of your great_expectations/ folder. This guide will help you configure Great Expectations to store them in Azure Blob Storage.

Prerequisites: This how-to guide assumes that you have already:

Configured a Data Context.
Configured an Expectations Suite.
Configured an Azure storage account and get the connection string
Create the Azure Blob container. If you also wish to host and share data docs on azure blob storage then you may setup this first and then use the $web existing container to store your expectations.
Identify the prefix (folder) where Expectations will be stored (you don’t need to create the folder, the prefix is just part of the Blob name).

Steps¶

Show Docs for V2 (Batch Kwargs) API

Configure the config_variables.yml file with your azure storage credentials
We recommend that azure storage credentials be stored in the config_variables.yml file, which is located in the uncommitted/ folder by default, and is not part of source control. The following lines add azure storage credentials under the key AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING. Additional options for configuring the config_variables.yml file or additional environment variables can be found here.
AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING: "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>"

Identify your Data Context Expectations Store

In your great_expectations.yml , look for the following lines. The configuration tells Great Expectations to look for Expectations in a store called expectations_store. The base_directory for expectations_store is set to expectations/ by default.
expectations_store_name: expectations_store

stores:
    expectations_store:
        class_name: ExpectationsStore
        store_backend:
            class_name: TupleFilesystemStoreBackend
            base_directory: expectations/

Update your configuration file to include a new store for Expectations on Azure storage account
In our case, the name is set to expectations_AZ_store, but it can be any name you like. We also need to make some changes to the store_backend settings. The class_name will be set to TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend, container will be set to the name of your blob container (the equivalent of S3 bucket for Azure) you wish to store your expectations, prefix will be set to the folder in the container where Expectation files will be located, and connection_string will be set to ${AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING}, which references the corresponding key in the config_variables.yml file.
expectations_store_name: expectations_AZ_store stores: expectations_AZ_store: class_name: ExpectationsStore store_backend: class_name: TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend container: <blob-container> prefix: expectations connection_string: ${AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING}
Note

If the container is called $web (for hosting and sharing data docs on azure blob storage) then set container: \$web so the escape char will allow us to reach the ``$web``container.

Copy existing Expectation JSON files to the Azure blob. (This step is optional).

One way to copy Expectations into Azure Blob Storage is by using the az storage blob upload command, which is part of the Azure SDK. The following example will copy one Expectation, exp1 from a local folder to the Azure blob. Information on other ways to copy Expectation JSON files, like the Azure Storage browser in the Azure Portal, can be found in the Documentation for Azure.
export AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>"
az storage blob upload -f <local/path/to/expectation.json> -c <GREAT-EXPECTATION-DEDICATED-AZURE-BLOB-CONTAINER-NAME> -n <PREFIX>/<expectation.json>
example :
az storage blob upload -f great_expectations/expectations/exp1.json -c <blob-container> -n expectations/exp1.json

Finished[#############################################################]  100.0000%
{
"etag": "\"0x8D8E08E5DA47F84\"",
"lastModified": "2021-03-06T10:55:33+00:00"
}

Confirm that the new Expectations store has been added by running great_expectations store list

Notice the output contains two Expectation stores: the original expectations_store on the local filesystem and the expectations_AZ_store we just configured. This is ok, since Great Expectations will look for Expectations in Azure Blob as long as we set the expectations_store_name variable to expectations_AZ_store, which we did in the previous step. The config for expectations_store can be removed if you would like.
great_expectations store list

 - name: expectations_store
   class_name: ExpectationsStore
   store_backend:
     class_name: TupleFilesystemStoreBackend
     base_directory: expectations/

 - name: expectations_AZ_store
   class_name: ExpectationsStore
   store_backend:
     class_name: TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend
     connection_string: DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>
     container: <blob-container>
     prefix: expectations

Confirm that Expectations can be accessed from Azure Blob Storage by running great_expectations suite list.
If you followed Step 4, the output should include the Expectation we copied to Azure Blob: exp1. If you did not copy Expectations to the new Store, you will see a message saying no Expectations were found.
great_expectations suite list Using v2 (Batch Kwargs) API 1 Expectation Suite found: - exp1

Show Docs for V3 (Batch Request) API

Configure the config_variables.yml file with your azure storage credentials
We recommend that azure storage credentials be stored in the config_variables.yml file, which is located in the uncommitted/ folder by default, and is not part of source control. The following lines add azure storage credentials under the key AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING. Additional options for configuring the config_variables.yml file or additional environment variables can be found here.
AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING: "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>"

Identify your Data Context Expectations Store

In your great_expectations.yml , look for the following lines. The configuration tells Great Expectations to look for Expectations in a store called expectations_store. The base_directory for expectations_store is set to expectations/ by default.
expectations_store_name: expectations_store

stores:
    expectations_store:
        class_name: ExpectationsStore
        store_backend:
            class_name: TupleFilesystemStoreBackend
            base_directory: expectations/

Update your configuration file to include a new store for Expectations on Azure storage account
In our case, the name is set to expectations_AZ_store, but it can be any name you like. We also need to make some changes to the store_backend settings. The class_name will be set to TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend, container will be set to the name of your blob container (the equivalent of S3 bucket for Azure) you wish to store your expectations, prefix will be set to the folder in the container where Expectation files will be located, and connection_string will be set to ${AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING}, which references the corresponding key in the config_variables.yml file.
expectations_store_name: expectations_AZ_store stores: expectations_AZ_store: class_name: ExpectationsStore store_backend: class_name: TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend container: <blob-container> prefix: expectations connection_string: ${AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING}
Note

If the container is called $web (for hosting and sharing data docs on azure blob storage) then set container: \$web so the escape char will allow us to reach the ``$web``container.

Copy existing Expectation JSON files to the Azure blob. (This step is optional).

One way to copy Expectations into Azure Blob Storage is by using the az storage blob upload command, which is part of the Azure SDK. The following example will copy one Expectation, exp1 from a local folder to the Azure blob. Information on other ways to copy Expectation JSON files, like the Azure Storage browser in the Azure Portal, can be found in the Documentation for Azure.
export AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>"
az storage blob upload -f <local/path/to/expectation.json> -c <GREAT-EXPECTATION-DEDICATED-AZURE-BLOB-CONTAINER-NAME> -n <PREFIX>/<expectation.json>
example :
az storage blob upload -f great_expectations/expectations/exp1.json -c <blob-container> -n expectations/exp1.json

Finished[#############################################################]  100.0000%
{
"etag": "\"0x8D8E08E5DA47F84\"",
"lastModified": "2021-03-06T10:55:33+00:00"
}

Confirm that the new Expectations store has been added by running great_expectations --v3-api store list

Notice the output contains two Expectation stores: the original expectations_store on the local filesystem and the expectations_AZ_store we just configured. This is ok, since Great Expectations will look for Expectations in Azure Blob as long as we set the expectations_store_name variable to expectations_AZ_store, which we did in the previous step. The config for expectations_store can be removed if you would like.
great_expectations --v3-api store list

 - name: expectations_store
   class_name: ExpectationsStore
   store_backend:
     class_name: TupleFilesystemStoreBackend
     base_directory: expectations/

 - name: expectations_AZ_store
   class_name: ExpectationsStore
   store_backend:
     class_name: TupleAzureBlobStoreBackend
     connection_string: DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountName=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-NAME>;AccountKey=<YOUR-STORAGE-ACCOUNT-KEY==>
     container: <blob-container>
     prefix: expectations

Confirm that Expectations can be accessed from Azure Blob Storage by running great_expectations --v3-api suite list.
If you followed Step 4, the output should include the Expectation we copied to Azure Blob: exp1. If you did not copy Expectations to the new Store, you will see a message saying no Expectations were found.
great_expectations --v3-api suite list Using v2 (Batch Kwargs) API 1 Expectation Suite found: - exp1