
What I like best about Azure Data Factory (ADF) is that it hits a really nice spot between enterprise-grade orchestration and day-to-day practicality. A few highlights that genuinely stand out:
Orchestration without friction:
ADF is excellent at coordinating many moving parts: Blob storage, ADLS Gen2, Azure SQL, Synapse, Databricks, Functions, REST APIs, without forcing you to glue everything together manually. Pipelines, triggers, and dependencies feel very natural once you’ve used them a bit.
Clear separation of concerns:
The way ADF separates control flow (pipelines, activities, triggers) from data processing (Spark, SQL, Functions) is a big win. It doesn’t try to be the compute engine; it just orchestrates things cleanly and lets the right service do the heavy lifting.
Parameterization & reusability:
Pipelines, datasets, and linked services are highly parameterizable. This makes it easy to build config-driven ingestion frameworks (single pipeline, many sources), which scales really well in real enterprise setups.
First-class integration with the Azure ecosystem:
Native integration with Synapse, Key Vault, Event Grid, Functions, and Managed Identity is a huge plus. Secure access without secrets flying around is something you really appreciate in production.
Operational visibility:
Monitoring, retry logic, failure paths, and alerts are built in. When something breaks at 3 a.m., you can quickly see what failed, why, and with what input, without digging through logs for hours.
Low barrier to entry, high ceiling:
You can start with simple copy pipelines very quickly but still grow into advanced patterns: metadata-driven pipelines, conditional branching, dynamic execution, and hybrid solutions with Spark or Functions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ADF is an excellent tool at orchestration, but it can feel clunky for debugging, complex logic, and large-team development. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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