Introducing Azure Data Factory
In Chapter 8, Provisioning and Implementing an Azure Synapse SQL Pool, you saw the modern data warehouse architecture as shown in Figure 11.1:
Figure 11.1 – Modern data warehouse architecture
All the arrows in Figure 11.1 denote data movement activities. We need to export data from the operational databases and copy that data to the data lake's raw zone. We then process the newly added data and move the now transformed data into the curated zone of the data lake. From there, the data is transformed even more. Business rules are applied and the data is shaped into a star schema design to be stored in a data mart. We might then process an Analysis Services tabular model to serve the data to end users.
The entire process of moving data and transforming it is referred to as the ETL process. It sometimes involves copying data and, on other occasions, the data needs to be transformed. Depending on the situation, we can...