Serverless SQL pool can automatically synchronize metadata from Apache Spark. A serverless SQL pool database will be created for each database existing in serverless Apache Spark pools. For each Spark external table based on Parquet and located in Azure Storage, an external table is created in a serverless SQL pool database. As such, you can shut down your Spark pools and still query Spark external tables from serverless SQL pool. Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql/develop-storage-files-spark-tables