Great question 🚀 — people often confuse Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Azure Synapse Analytics because both deal with data, but they serve different roles.
Let’s break it down clearly 👇
🔹 Azure Data Factory (ADF) vs Azure Synapse Analytics🔗
| Feature | Azure Data Factory (ADF) | Azure Synapse Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Data integration & orchestration (ETL/ELT). Moves and transforms data. | Data storage, querying & analytics (data warehouse). Stores large amounts of structured data for reporting. |
| Type of Service | ETL tool (like SSIS in the cloud). | Data warehouse (like SQL Server on steroids). |
| Main Role | Move data between sources → clean/transform → load into storage/warehouse. | Store processed data and allow BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) or analysts to query it fast. |
| Data Sources | Connects to 100+ sources (SQL, NoSQL, APIs, files, SaaS apps). | Queries mainly relational/tabular data stored inside Synapse or external tables. |
| Storage | Doesn’t store data (only moves it). Uses staging temporarily. | Stores structured, query-ready data. |
| Compute | Uses Integration Runtime (IR) for data movement/transformation. | Uses Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) engine for fast queries. |
| Transformations | - Built-in (mapping data flows) |
- Orchestration of external compute (Databricks, HDInsight, Synapse pipelines) | - In-database transformations via SQL (T-SQL, stored procs) | | Best for | - Data pipelines (ETL/ELT)
- Moving from on-prem/cloud → Azure
- Orchestrating Databricks or ML flows | - Business intelligence
- Reporting dashboards (Power BI)
- Analyzing terabytes of structured data | | Pricing | Pay-per-use (based on activities & data movement). | Pay-per-use (on-demand SQL) or reserved (dedicated pools). |
🔹 How They Work Together🔗
👉 Typically, you use ADF + Synapse together in a modern data architecture:
- ADF → Extracts raw sales data from SQL Server, API, and Blob storage.
- ADF → Cleans/transforms data (orchestrates Databricks/Spark).
- ADF → Loads processed data into Synapse Analytics.
- Synapse → Analysts query data with SQL or Power BI for dashboards.
🔹 Simple Analogy🔗
- ADF = Data factory workers 🏭 → They collect, clean, and deliver the materials (data).
- Synapse = Warehouse & analysts 🏢 → They store the materials neatly and let people quickly find/analyze what they need.
✅ In short:
- Use ADF when you need to move/transform/orchestrate data.
- Use Synapse when you need to store/analyze/report data.
Do you want me to draw you a step-by-step flow showing ADF + Synapse + Power BI in a pipeline so it’s crystal clear how they connect?