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The most useful guides in this topic, not just the most recent.
Azure Data Factory Guides & Tutorials
Azure Data Factory end to end — pipelines, linked services, triggers, copy activity, mapping data flows and Synapse.
Azure Data Factory articles
Azure Synapse vs Azure Data Factory: A Comparison
Azure Data Factory moves and orchestrates data. Azure Synapse Analytics stores and analyses it, and happens to include a copy of Data Factory's pipeline engine. This guide compares what each can and cannot do, where the overlap is, how each is sized and billed, and the questions that decide which you need.
Azure Data Factory Interview Questions and Answers
Azure Data Factory interview questions grouped the way interviewers ask them: fundamentals, the Copy activity, control flow, triggers, incremental loading, error handling, data flows, security and deployment, then scenarios. Each answer gives the documented fact, the reasoning, and the follow-up to expect.
ADF Control Flow: ForEach, If and Until Activities
Control flow activities turn a list of steps into logic. This guide covers the four that do most of the work in Azure Data Factory: ForEach for loops, If Condition and Switch for branching, and Until for polling, with each one's properties and documented limits, a JSON example, the nesting rule and concurrency traps.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Explained
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is Blob Storage with a hierarchical namespace switched on. This guide explains what that one setting changes, how role assignments and access control lists are evaluated together, with a model checked against Microsoft's own table, and how to lay out folders, files and tiers.
Incremental Data Loading in Azure Data Factory
Incremental loading copies only what changed since the last run. This guide explains the four approaches Azure Data Factory documents, builds the watermark pattern step by step, runs it on a real table to show what it catches and what it silently misses, and says when to use change tracking, dated folders or windows.
Azure Data Engineer Certification (DP-203) Guide
Exam DP-203 and the Azure Data Engineer Associate certification were retired on 31 March 2025. This guide explains what that means for people who hold it or were studying for it, what the exam covered, how the Fabric Data Engineer Associate exam DP-700 differs, and how to plan your preparation now.