What is the difference between ADF and Synapse Analytics

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What is the difference between ADF and Synapse Analytics

Lisa Kruger 60

Hi All, We are using ADF to load data , why would we need Azure synapse analytics? Please advice. Thanks

Nandan Hegde 36,156 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2023-04-13T02:51:27.0633333+00:00

ADF can be considered as a sub set of Synapse analytics (though there are some features in ADF which are yet not available in Synapse pipelines) Synapse analytics is a combination of pipelines (similar to ADF), serverless pool, dedicated pool, notebooks, ADLS ecosystem etc
Lisa Kruger 60 Reputation points

2023-04-13T12:22:49.69+00:00

@Nandan hegde thanks

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Nandan Hegde 36,156 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2023-04-13T02:51:27.0633333+00:00

ADF can be considered as a sub set of Synapse analytics (though there are some features in ADF which are yet not available in Synapse pipelines) Synapse analytics is a combination of pipelines (similar to ADF), serverless pool, dedicated pool, notebooks, ADLS ecosystem etc
Lisa Kruger 60 Reputation points

2023-04-13T12:22:49.69+00:00

@Nandan hegde thanks

Answer 1

GeethaThatipatri-MSFT 29,552 Microsoft Employee Moderator

@Lisa Kruger Azure Synapse Analytics is a cloud-based analytics service that provides a unified experience for data ingestion, big data, data warehousing, and data exploration. It is designed to handle large amounts of data and provide insights quickly. It can help you to analyze data from multiple sources, including Azure Data Factory (ADF). ADF is a cloud-based data integration service that allows you to create, schedule, and manage data pipelines that move and transform data. It is used to move data from various sources to various destinations, including Azure Synapse Analytics.

Azure Synapse Analytics provides a more comprehensive set of analytics capabilities than ADF. It includes features such as data warehousing, big data processing, and machine learning. If you need to perform complex analytics on large amounts of data, Azure Synapse Analytics may be a better choice than ADF.
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In summary, if you need to perform complex analytics on large amounts of data, Azure Synapse Analytics is a good choice. If you only need to move data from various sources to various destinations, ADF may be sufficient I hope this information helps

Regards

Geetha

Lisa Kruger 60 Reputation points

2023-04-13T12:21:17.17+00:00

@GeethaThatipatri-MSFT So we can bypass ADF and just use synapse pipeline to load data? And is ADLS2 blob storage same as the Azure datalake? Can we integrate both the structured and unstructured data? And where in the process can we do that? Thanks
Nandan Hegde 36,156 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2023-04-13T12:34:04.03+00:00

Hey @Lisa Kruger , Yes, ADF and synpase pipelines have the same functionality for data loading purpose (note: but ADF has additional features which are yet not in synapse pipelines, so you need to make the decision correctly) yes, Azure datalake storage is what we call ADLS gen 2 as Gen i would be deperacted in couple of months. and it can have both structured and unstructred data
GeethaThatipatri-MSFT 29,552 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-04-13T14:31:33.7166667+00:00

Thanks, @Nandan Hegde for providing additional comments
Lisa Kruger If you think your question has been answered, click "Mark as Accept Answer", This can be beneficial to other community members reading this forum thread.

Answer 2

Thanks for your question. You can find the difference between ADF and Synapse Analytics in below doc Differences from Azure Data Factory - Azure Synapse Analytics | Microsoft Learn Why we need that- In Azure Synapse Analytics, the data integration capabilities such as Synapse pipelines and data flows are based upon those of Azure Data Factory. Azure Synapse Analytics is an enterprise analytics service that accelerates time to insight across data warehouses and big data systems. It brings together the best of SQL technologies used in enterprise data warehousing Synapse is a great data lake house tool. This means in a single tool we have resources to manage a data lake and data warehouse. Let us know if you have any further questions or need additional information. Thank you!

Lisa Kruger 60 Reputation points

2023-04-13T12:22:22.82+00:00

@Rahul Randive thanks will look into the link.

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What is the difference between ADF and Synapse Analytics

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