Cognitive Search is a cloud search service with built-in AI capabilities that enable you to ingest, explore and visualize data from various sources. Incorporating this powerful feature into your Azure AI solutions enhances the application’s capabilities and performance.
In preparation for the AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI solution exam, understanding how to provision a Cognitive Search resource is crucial.
Provisioning a Cognitive Search Resource
Deploying a Cognitive Search resource involves several steps. Here, we’ll break down this process into different stages for a better understanding.
1. Sign in to Azure Portal
The first step is to sign in to your Azure portal. If you don’t have an account, you can create one for free.
2. Create a Cognitive Search resource
Once in your portal, navigate to the Azure Cognitive Search page. Click on the ‘Add’ button to create a new search service. Fill in the necessary details, including subscription, resource group, location, and pricing tier. Hit the ‘Review + Create’ button and wait for validation to pass. Once everything is validated, click ‘Create.’
3. Add your data
After your search service is available, navigate to the Import data page from the search service dashboard. Here, you’ll be able to specify the data source for Cognitive Search to index. Azure supports a variety of data sources, including Azure SQL Database, Blob Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, and more.
4. Configure Index
After specifying your data source, it’s time to create an index for the data. An index consists of one or more fields that determine how the data within it will be queried. You can have multiple indexes within a single data source.
5. Configure Indexer
The indexer does the work of extracting search-ready data from the data source and populating the index according to the mappings specified during index configuration. Fortunately, Azure Cognitive Search provides a Wizard to guide you in setting up the indexer.
6. Test the Search
After the indexing is done, you can test your search. Using Search explorer accessible from the dashboard of the search service in your Azure portal, you can run queries against your data to verify the results.
Observations and Tips
Remember, all these steps are essential provisions for Cognitive Search resources. While the specific requirements may vary based on the data source and the preferred search results, the general process remains the same.
Depending on the selected pricing tier during the creation process, you may have different features and capacities available. It’s crucial to choose a tier that aligns with the requirements of your application.
Also, Cognitive Search supports complex types, allowing you to define more structured data within your index. Take advantage of this feature if your data is structured and you want to retain this structure within your search service.
Using Azure Cognitive Search in your Microsoft Azure AI solutions provides more sophisticated search capabilities, enhances user experience, and boosts application performance.
In conclusion, Azure Cognitive Search is a significant capability in Azure’s AI ecosystem. Provisioning a Cognitive Search resource not only strengthens your AI solution but also improves your skillset in readiness for the AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI solution exam.
Remember to leverage Microsoft’s official documentation and learning resources to understand this and more topics as you prepare for your certification exam. Remember, the key to mastering Azure AI is continuous learning and practice!
Practice Test
True or False: You can use Cognitive Search to apply AI to understand and explore your business information.
• True
• False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search offers AI capabilities to facilitate a better search experience, including understanding the content and user intention, and delivering more relevant results.
Which of the following is a prerequisite for provisioning a Cognitive Search resource in Azure?
• A. Azure subscription
• B. Azure Data Explorer (ADX)
• C. Azure DevOps
• D. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Answer: A. Azure subscription
Explanation: To provision an Azure Cognitive Search resource, an active Azure subscription is the primary prerequisite.
True or False: You can create a knowledge store with Azure Cognitive Search.
• True
• False
Answer: True
Explanation: The knowledge store feature in Azure Cognitive Search allows projections of enriched documents to be saved in a tabular or object form for analytical purposes.
What are the two types of pricing tiers in Azure Cognitive Search?
• A. Basic and Standard
• B. Free and Paid
• C. Storage and Compute
• D. Individual and Business
Answer: A. Basic and Standard
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search differentiates between Basic and Standard pricing tiers, offering different features, capacities and limits at each level.
True or False: Azure Cognitive Search is a platform as a service (PaaS).
• True
• False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search is a PaaS, which means that Microsoft takes care of infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, allowing developers to focus on the application logic.
Which service does Azure Cognitive Search use for AI enrichment?
• A. Azure Bot Framework
• B. Azure Machine Learning
• C. Azure Cognitive Services
• D. Azure Data Science
Answer: C. Azure Cognitive Services
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search uses Azure Cognitive Services for AI enrichment, allowing sophisticated processes like image and text extraction, language detection and more.
True or False: Azure Cognitive Search can index and search data from any data source.
• True
• False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search supports specific data sources, although through data ingestion and the pull model, it can index data from a wide variety of sources.
What role does an indexer play in Azure Cognitive Search?
• A. Data Extraction
• B. Data Transformation
• C. Data Loading
• D. All of the above
Answer: D. All of the above
Explanation: An indexer in Azure Cognitive Search does the tasks of extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of data from a source data repository into a search index.
True or False: You can implement real-time search with Azure Cognitive Search.
• True
• False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Cognitive Search supports near real-time indexing, which enables search of the indexed data within seconds of its ingestion.
What is the primary purpose of configuring synonyms in Azure Cognitive Search?
• A. To handle homonyms in search queries
• B. To broaden the search results
• C. To handle spelling mistakes in search queries
• D. To prevent irrelevant results
Answer: B. To broaden the search results
Explanation: Configuring synonyms in Azure Cognitive Search allows equivalent terms to be recognized as matching during search, broadening the search results.
Interview Questions
What is Cognitive Search?
It is an AI service in Microsoft Azure that enables users to apply Cognitive Services algorithms on the data ingested from various sources to extract new insights.
How can you provision a Cognitive Search resource?
You can provision a Cognitive Search resource from the Azure portal. Upon finding and selecting “Azure Cognitive Search”, you will need to provide details such as the subscription, resource group, URL, location, and pricing tier.
Can you change the pricing tier of a Cognitive Search resource after it’s been provisioned?
Yes, you can change the pricing tier of a Cognitive Search resource, but it’s important to note that scaling up to a higher tier will incur additional charges.
How is data indexed in Azure Cognitive Search?
Data sources are set up and attached to an indexer that crawls the data and pushes it into an index, making the data searchable.
What are Skillsets in Azure Cognitive Search?
Skillsets in Azure Cognitive Search are a collection of skills or steps utilized during the ingestion and indexing phase to enhance the source data before it is indexed.
What is an indexer in Azure Cognitive Search?
An indexer is a crawler that extracts searchable data and metadata from an external Azure data source and populates an index based on field-to-field mappings between the index and data source.
What is the maximum document size for indexing in Azure Cognitive Search?
The maximum document size for indexing in Azure Cognitive Search is 16 MB.
What type of data sources can Cognitive Search work with?
Cognitive Search can work with a variety of data sources including Azure Blob Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL Database, and more.
Is it possible to use the Azure Cognitive Search REST API to send requests to a search service?
Yes, Azure Cognitive Search provides a REST API that can be used to send requests to a search service and perform operations such as creating an index, loading data, or executing a search.
How do Cognitive Search and Cognitive Services differ?
While Cognitive Search is a specific Azure service focusing on making content more searchable, Cognitive Services comprise a variety of AI services and APIs for different tasks including computer vision, natural language processing, and more.
Can Azure Cognitive Search be integrated with other Azure services?
Yes, Azure Cognitive Search can be combined with various Azure services to build complete solutions, e.g., it can work with Azure Functions to create data processing pipelines or with Azure Logic Apps for workflow automation.
Is it possible to modify an Azure Cognitive Search index after creation?
No, once a search index is created, it can’t be modified. To change it, you’ll need to delete it and create a new one.
What is the purpose of a scoring profile in Azure Cognitive Search?
A scoring profile allows you to influence the ranking of documents in search results by defining criteria such as text weights, functions, and parameters.
How does Azure Cognitive Search handle security and privacy?
Azure Cognitive Search offers integrated security measures, such as encryption of data at rest and in transit, and compliance with global standards. It also allows network isolation through private endpoints.
What programming languages can be used to interact with Azure Cognitive Search?
Azure Cognitive Search can be accessed using various programming languages such as .NET, Python, Java, and JavaScript using the provided SDKs.
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