Using Mermaid to Create a ProcFwk Pipeline Lineage Diagram

The other day Kamil (@NowinskiK) messaged me on Teams asking if I liked Mermaid's 🙂 I prepared myself for a conversation about which was better; the fish half being on top vs on the bottom. Ha! Of course not!! Kamil was actually referring to the... Javascript based diagramming and charting tool that renders Markdown-inspired text … Continue reading Using Mermaid to Create a ProcFwk Pipeline Lineage Diagram

Azure Data Factory by Example – A Review of My Technical Review

On 2nd June 2020 Apress reached out to me about the role of technical reviewer on a book about Azure Data Factory. The exact conversation may amuse you, so I've included it exactly as it happened 🙂 THE BEGINNING Paul,I know writing is out of the question, but do you have bandwidth to tech review … Continue reading Azure Data Factory by Example – A Review of My Technical Review

An Architects Guide to Delivering Data Insights Using the Microsoft Azure Data Platform

Azure Data Analytics End to End Let's start with a story, not a 'once upon a time story', a story for your backlog 🙂 As a solution architect I need to design and build an Azure data analytics platform end to end to deliver data insights for my customer. In February 2021 I delivered a … Continue reading An Architects Guide to Delivering Data Insights Using the Microsoft Azure Data Platform

Pipelines – Understanding Internal vs External Activities

Azure Data Factory & Azure Synapse Analytics Integrate Pipelines In this post I want us to explore and understand the difference between an internal and external activity when using our favourite orchestration pipelines. I'll focus predominately on Azure Data Factory (ADF), but the same applies to Azure Synapse Analytics. *Warning: this is a fairly dry, … Continue reading Pipelines – Understanding Internal vs External Activities

Data Factory Activity Concurrency Limits – What Happens Next?

As a follow up to my blog about Data Factory resource limitations here. I decided to dig deeper and expose some of these limitations with a view to understanding what happens to your pipeline when/if you hit them. In this post I'm focusing on the Activity Concurrency limits, as a reminder: Resource Default limit Maximum … Continue reading Data Factory Activity Concurrency Limits – What Happens Next?

Get Data Factory to Check Itself for a Running Pipeline via the Azure Management API

Hi friends, just a very quick how to guide style post on something I had to build in Azure Data Factory. Scenario: I want to trigger a Data Factory pipeline, but when I do I want the pipeline to know if it's already running. If it is already running, stop the new run. Sounds simple … Continue reading Get Data Factory to Check Itself for a Running Pipeline via the Azure Management API

Best Practices for Implementing Azure Data Factory – Auto Checker Script v0.1

Building on the work done and detailed in my previous blog post (Best Practices for Implementing Azure Data Factory) I was tasked by my delightful boss to turn this content into a simple check list of what/why that others could use.... I slightly reluctantly did so. However, I wanted to do something better than simply … Continue reading Best Practices for Implementing Azure Data Factory – Auto Checker Script v0.1

Spark Data Frame Infer Schema vs Data Factory Get Metadata Activity

Here's a quick bit of information I thought was worth sharing... For file types that don't contain there own metadata (CSV, Text etc) we typically have to go and figure out there structure including; attributes and data types before doing any actual transformation work. Often I've used the Data Factory Metadata Activity to do this … Continue reading Spark Data Frame Infer Schema vs Data Factory Get Metadata Activity

Capturing YouTube Video Views with Azure Data Factory

As a result of the pandemic like many other community speakers I've taken to YouTube as the current method for sharing knowledge and content. Recording video's isn't as much fun as speaking at a physical event, but it partially ticks the box. Plus, my daughter thinks its "cool" that I have a YouTube channel, so … Continue reading Capturing YouTube Video Views with Azure Data Factory