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
ADF Global Parameters and Variables Explained
Azure Data Factory has three ways to hold a value: pipeline parameters, variables and global parameters. This guide compares their scope and whether they can change, shows Set Variable and Append Variable in JSON, explains why a variable cannot reference itself and why variables misbehave in parallel loops.
Event-Based Triggers with Azure Event Grid and ADF
Event-based triggers start an Azure Data Factory pipeline when something happens, not when a clock says so. This guide explains storage event and custom event triggers, the role of Azure Event Grid, path filters and their limits, passing the file name to the pipeline, and designing for duplicates and partial files.
Data Partitioning Strategies in ADF Copy Activity
A large table copied through one query is limited by one connection. This guide explains the partition options of the Azure Data Factory Copy activity, how dynamic range bounds really work, how to choose a partition column, with skew measured on 2.9 million real rows, and how partitioning applies to files.
Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900): A Quick-Start Guide
AZ-900 is Microsoft's entry-level Azure exam: 45 minutes on cloud concepts, core Azure services, and management and governance. This guide gives the current outline with its weights, explains the ideas behind each area in plain terms, covers format, scoring and retakes, and sets out a three-week study plan.
ADF Performance Tuning: DIUs and Parallelism
Raising DIUs is the reflex when a Copy activity is slow, and it is often the wrong move. This guide explains what Data Integration Units and parallel copies control, their documented defaults and limits, how billing responds, when staged copy helps, and how to read the monitoring view to find the real bottleneck.
Azure Synapse Pipelines vs Standalone ADF
Synapse pipelines are built on Azure Data Factory, so most of what you know transfers. The gaps are few and specific: integration runtime sharing, the SSIS runtime, global parameters, Power Query and how deployment works. This guide lists each documented difference, what it means in practice, and how to choose.