Data Factory Native Chases Integration Services

• Azure Data Factory’s Native mode can handle more workloads that used to require SQL Server Integration Services, making migration an option for more systems.
• SQL Server Integration Services has stagnated but does not need to be replaced immediately.

Azure Data Factory is Microsoft’s cloud service that automates data integration and transformation between databases and other data stores via extract, transfer, and load (ETL and ELT) processes. Data Factory’s low-code deployment option, called Native mode, is improving to address enterprise requirements to entice customers away from SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), the software’s built-in ETL component. However, Native mode still lacks some key enterprise capabilities and customers should plan for a slow migration to Native mode or third-party solutions, rather than rushing into a full-scale change.

Data Factory Overview and Strategy

A Data Factory solution, called a pipeline, is composed of activities, which are steps that automate data integration, transformation, and movement of data. For example, a Data Factory pipeline might pull (extract) data from regional sales databases, summarize (transform) the data, and save (load) the results into a corporate data warehouse that is used to calculate daily sales performance metrics. The service can access data from multiple data stores, including on-premises, Azure-hosted, and third-party cloud database services.