Introducing the main components of Azure Data Factory
Before getting our hands dirty with hands-on examples, let's get familiar with some terminology. We will do that by explaining the main components comprising Azure Data Factory. Figure 11.2 shows the main components of Azure Data Factory and how they relate to one another:
Figure 11.2 – Azure Data Factory components
The main components comprising Azure Data Factory are as follows:
- Activities
- Datasets
- Linked services
- Pipelines
Let's look at each of these components in some detail.
Understanding activities
An activity is a piece of work that needs to be completed. An activity is a single piece of work, a single step if you will, in a larger whole. You could also describe an activity as a task that needs to be performed. Basically, there are just two tasks: you either copy or transform data. Getting data into the cloud or, when it is cloud-born, getting it into...