Azure Data Factory Cookbook: Build and manage ETL and ELT pipelines with Microsoft Azure's serverless data integration service

This is a well written book. It was easy to follow. I got a copy for each of my team members who have varying levels of ADF skills. All reported positive feedback.

This is a good book on ADF. It definitely could use a revision.

Learned enough to learn about ADF and get me comfortable at work

Disclaimer: The publisher asked me to review this book and gave me a review copy. I promise to be 100% honest in how I feel about this book, both the good and the less so.OverviewThis book is intended for someone who has to start working in Azure Data factory with very less knowledge. This is exclusively for the Developers and will be their cheat sheet to get the job done.What I Like:This book serves as a real cookbook to get the work done for Developers or DevOps Engineers in Azure Data Factory. I like the way how the table of contents is structured which makes it very easy to natigate through the book. It started with Creating the ADF using different tools, Control flow, setting the warehouse, Big Data, SSIS and Data Migration. It almost handled all the possible workflow within the Azure Data factory. I like the references link provided in "See Also" section. All the links takes to the Azure Libraries, which is of great advantage. Anyone refers this book not only can understand what is been mentioned here, also can go through the Azure Documentation using the referred link. This book serves more like a cheat sheet for any Begineer Data Engineers to perform his job. The Screenshots are provided throughout all the section of the book which makes easy to understand and perform the task. The standard structure used in this cookbook makes it easy to read through and focus on what you need.What I Don't Like:This is a great cheatsheet for whomever is currently a newbie to Azure Data Factory. But at the same time, little more introduction on the Cloud, different flavors/vendors of Cloud, What is Azure and the introdution of Azure Data Factory would have been a great help. Different ways to perform the work is provided, but little more information on why there are different ways to perform and the best optimal ways should have been mentioned.What I Would Like to See:Different ways to perform the work is provided, but little more information on why there are different ways to perform and the best optimal ways should have been mentioned. As a cookbook, now only the "How to " part, also the "Why" part should be covered in the high level. I would like to see the usecases on each of the section. For example, In Chapter 5, Working with BigData – HDInsight and Databricks I expected few more information on what is HD Insight and how it is different from Apache Hadoop and other distributions. In what kind of projects the HD Insights and Databricks can work together so that whomever is working will know the Business and application point of view as well.I can easily give this book a 5 out of 5 as a Cheatsheet, but giving 4 as expected the Why and Application side of it.

As of August 2021, there are only two ADF books worth considering - this one, and "Azure Data Factory by Example" by Richard Swinbank. You ought to see both.Swinbank's is a better-written book that really focuses on ADF - outside of ADF, only SSIS, Azure Key Vault and Azure DevOps come up, quite naturally - and goes deeper. "Azure Data Factory Cookbook", on the other hand, is a Packt-standard quick-and-dirty offering that takes a broader view, and considers ADF alongside other Azure tools: those enter the picture as “sources” or ”sinks” for ADF data flows, or subjects of orchestration by ADF.Four authors have split different Azure products between themselves; if you are only interested in some of these products, the book’s useful page count will be reduced, and perhaps you will get by reasonably well with free online resources. However, “Azure Data Factory Cookbook" will make your life easier, will make you aware of things that ADF can do - how do you google something you don't know exists? - and is an aid definitely worth exploring.PS. The author of the chapter on Azure DevOps mentions that you need an “Azure license”. How do I get one? ;)

DISCLAIMER: I received this book from the publisher for review. My opinion is completely unbiased and solely from an developer/reader point of view.Overall Review: I found this book to be quite resourceful to quickly introduce you to all the important concepts around ADF with hands-on examples and scenarios. This will be very useful to someone starting new with ADF and also to those who are experienced to get familiar with new concepts and new ways to do things. (***I myself used some of the concepts to improve some of the pipelines at work**)What I like:- Neatly structured for easy reading and understanding. Exaclty how a cookbook should be.- Liked the way how technical requirements are well layed out before each chapter to make things easy.- Probably the best thing about this book is, along with covering important how-to concepts of ADF, this book also get's you familiar with ADF integration with other Azure service like Synapse, ML, Databricks, ADLS etc.- Provides links to helpful resources if you want to dig deep into the concepts introduced.What I don't like:There isn't much that is totally off with this book, but I personally felt that in places where the book says to "use this piece of code" needed better explanation on how the code works. Though every chapter has its own "How it works" section to explain what was done, additional explanation would be helpful.One other thing is, in Chapter 3 following the instructions as is may not give you straight results as expected. I had to make minor adjustments based on the errors recived (Probably this is a best way to learn for someone who likes to debug issue, but will be frustrating for those who are new or like things to work as mentioned).What I would like to see:As mentioned earlier, this book is resourceful in many ways but I would have liked to see some information on below points:- A section collating all roles and permissions with access level. (This is explained as when required in some places but a dedicated section would be more informative).- Features that are missing or not availbe out of the box (but acheivable with workarounds) in ADF compared to traditional ETL/ELT tools. This will be useful to those who are experienced in other integration/orchestration tools and trying out ADF. (Though this may not be a need to have in a cookbook but its nice to have).

The author did not explain the data factory concepts as a whole. It's in bit and pieces and not well explained in detail. The "recipes" are boring and missing good ingredients that is expected when purchase a specific technical book. The chapters have information got easily from microsoft docs or YouTube. Bought it coz was cheapest among other ADF books but better to spend more for quality or watch basic YouTube videos

Good