Start here in Azure Data Factory
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
CI/CD for Azure Data Factory with Azure DevOps
Azure Data Factory is deployed as an ARM template generated from JSON in Git. This guide walks through the full path: branching on the development factory, the build that validates and exports the template, the release to test and production, stopping and restarting triggers, environment parameters, and hotfixes.
Datasets vs Linked Services vs Pipelines in ADF
Datasets, linked services and pipelines are the three objects every Azure Data Factory user creates and many beginners confuse. This guide separates them with one question each, where, what and how, shows the JSON of all three for a single copy, explains the reference chain, and gives rules for how many to create.
Building an ETL Pipeline with ADF Step by Step
A first ADF pipeline copies data from A to B. A production ETL pipeline must also survive reruns, updated records and broken extracts. This step-by-step guide builds the stage, validate and merge design, shows on real runs why plain appends go wrong, and gives the ADF pipeline and stored procedure.
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.
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.