An external table is a schema entity that references data stored outside the Azure Data Explorer database. Azure Data Explorer Web UI can create external tables by taking sample files from a storage container and creating schema based on these samples. You can then analyze and query data in external tables without ingestion into Azure Data Explorer. For information about different ways to create external tables, see create and alter external tables in Azure Storage or Azure Data Lake. For an introduction to the external Azure Storage tables feature, see Query data in Azure Data Lake using Azure Data Explorer.