Parquet format vs Delta format - Azure Data Factory

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Both Parquet and Delta formats have their own advantages and use cases. Deciding which format to use depends on the specific requirements and constraints of your Azure Data Factory (ADF) solution. Here's a comparison to help you decide which format is better for your situation: Parquet format: Columnar storage format: Parquet is a highly efficient columnar storage format, optimized for big data processing and analytics workloads. It offers great compression and encoding techniques, which reduce storage space and provide better query performance. Wide compatibility: Parquet is an open-standard format, and it's widely supported by various big data processing frameworks and tools like Apache Spark, Hive, and others. This makes it a good choice if you plan to use multiple processing engines or tools. Delta format: ACID transactions: Delta Lake format provides ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transaction support, ensuring data reliability and consistency in multi-user and concurrent read/write environments. This is particularly useful for scenarios where multiple users or processes are updating the data. Time Travel: Delta Lake allows you to access historical versions of your data, which can be useful for auditing, rollbacks, or reproducing reports and analyses from a specific point in time. Incremental processing: Delta format is designed to handle incremental data loads efficiently. It maintains metadata about added or modified data, which helps to optimize read and write operations. For a full load (not incremental) scenario, where transactional support and time travel are not crucial requirements, Parquet format is often a better choice due to its efficient columnar storage and compatibility with various big data processing tools. However, if you need ACID transaction support, time travel, or if you expect to transition to incremental processing in the future, Delta format might be a better choice. It's important to consider your specific use case and requirements to make the best decision for your solution. In case this answer helped kindly mark it as Accepted! BR