Automating ADF Unit testing. How to automate the ADF pipelines unit testing. Deployment pipelines are in place.

Question

Automating ADF Unit testing. How to automate the ADF pipelines unit testing. Deployment pipelines are in place.

Firthouse M G 80

Hello Microsoft Support team - Am writing this to know the best way to automate the Azure Data Factory pipeline Unit testing automation.

As part of our integration project we have 100 plus ADF pipelines and we are in the phase of developing them and as of now we are doing unit testing manually once pipeline is developed.
Azure DevOps pipelines are being developed for deploying these ADF to the higher environments.

Now we are looking options to automate those unit test cases when we deploy them in the higher environments by writing test cases and placing them in source control and to run them before deploying ADF pipelines to the higher environments and if test fails deployment will not happen.

What is the best language to choose to write the unit test cases and how to connect ADF to Visual Studio code and write test cases and test them and them use them in deployment pipelines.

Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-22T10:02:48.66+00:00

@Firthouse M G We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.

1 answer

Your answer

Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-22T10:02:48.66+00:00

@Firthouse M G We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.

Answer 1

Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Firthouse M G
You're raising a very relevant point, unit testing in ADF isn’t built-in like traditional development, but it can definitely be automated with the right structure. Here’s how we usually approach it in real-world projects:

How we handle ADF Unit Testing

We typically write PowerShell scripts (sometimes Python, depending on the team's comfort level) that:

Trigger ADF pipelines using test-specific parameters or datasets.

Wait for the run to complete.

Query the output (SQL tables, Blob, ADLS, etc.) to validate against expected results.

Fail the DevOps pipeline if the output doesn't match.

You can plug these scripts right into your Azure DevOps release pipeline before the actual deployment stage.

What we recommend

PowerShell is the most straightforward since it works well with Azure CLI and the Az module.
Keep your test cases in source control (as scripts), right next to your ADF code.
Create a lightweight test framework, doesn’t need to be fancy, even a JSON config that maps expected vs actual is enough.

VS Code Integration

You don’t write unit tests inside ADF or VS Code, but:

Use the Azure Data Factory extension in VS Code to manage pipelines.
Keep your test runner scripts in the same repo.
Hook everything together in your YAML/DevOps pipeline.

If you have specific requirements or need further assistance with setting up unit testing for ADF pipelines, feel free to provide more details for a more tailored response.

I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

Kindly consider upvoting the comment if the information provided is helpful. This can assist other community members in resolving similar issues.

Firthouse M G 80 Reputation points

2025-04-28T09:25:42.23+00:00

Hi @Smaran Thoomu - Thank you for your answer.
The Powershell is the good option. But what as a project we are looking into is writing .NET code with Nunit RM. We will use the Visual Studio to write the code and with Nunit and Azure data factory SDK we will connect to the Azure resources from Visual studio within C# code.
We have extensive pipelines which we use mainly to move data from source to destination and few check we do before storing them in the destination. We will write the C# code covering all the test cases and put it in Azure DevOps Deployment pipelines and only pass and deploy if test succeeded otherwise we will fail the deployment.

Do you see any risk in this approach? Are we approaching it in a write way?
Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-28T13:05:36.7433333+00:00
Hi Firthouse M G

Thank you for the detailed clarification and for sharing the architecture!

Your approach - using C# with NUnit to automate ADF unit tests integrated into the Azure DevOps pipelines - is absolutely valid and aligns with enterprise-grade best practices.

Here are a few observations based on your design:

Strengths in Your Approach:

Structured Testing Framework: Using NUnit within .NET gives you strong capabilities for assertions, test organization, and reporting.

CI/CD Integration: Embedding the test execution in your DevOps pipelines ensures that faulty pipelines are caught before they reach production environments.

Seamless ADF Integration: The Azure SDK for .NET provides robust methods to trigger pipelines, check status, and validate outputs programmatically.

Version Control: Storing both the ADF artifacts and your test code together improves traceability and reproducibility.

Diagram Insights:

Using Visual Studio + NUnit for test development.

Source Control (Git/Azure Repos) maintains both ADF and test artifacts.

Azure DevOps Pipelines drive the build, test, and deployment workflow.

Integration with Azure Key Vault is a good practice for handling secrets securely.

Points to Consider / Minor Risks:

Test Maintenance Overhead: With 100+ pipelines, make sure test cases are modular, reusable, and easy to update when pipelines change.

Test Data Management: You’ll need clean, resettable test datasets for consistent results across runs.

Timeout Handling: Large ADF pipelines can sometimes run longer than expected. Be sure your NUnit tests gracefully handle retries or extended waits.

Parallelism: Carefully design your DevOps pipeline if you want to run tests in parallel - avoid resource conflicts.

You are definitely approaching this the right way! With proper structuring and test maintenance, this model will give you a highly automated, reliable ADF development lifecycle.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-29T06:31:13.9033333+00:00

@Firthouse M G Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Firthouse M G 80 Reputation points

2025-05-02T06:39:44.1033333+00:00
@Smaran Thoomu - Thank you for your response.
As you mentioned below even though we will use .NET/C# code and Nunit libraries to connect to the ADF Pipelines directly to do the test. We will keep this test code in source control and will be triggering along with deployment pipelines right after deploying ADF in any of the environment other than development which we are purely using for development purpose.

By the comment below I understand that we cannot connect to DB directly via the C# test code and check for results and need to do automatically?

If we use C# and plugins can't we automate the result set checking as well by integrating select queries?

We are looking something to automate testing on the whole using C#,Nunit and any available plugin in .NET.

Let me know if this has done already if not will you be able to share a POC for this approach?
Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-02T20:37:44.47+00:00
Firthouse M G Thanks for the detailed explanation - you're on the right track, and yes, you can absolutely automate result validation using C# and NUnit. There’s no blocker in using ADO.NET or even EF Core in your test code to run SQL queries and compare actual vs expected results after your ADF pipeline runs.

For example, after triggering the pipeline using the Azure SDK (or REST API), you can open a DB connection inside your NUnit test, run a SELECT query against the output table, and use Assert.AreEqual() to validate the row count, content, etc.

Something like:

using (var conn = new SqlConnection("your-conn-string")) { conn.Open(); var cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM your_table", conn); var count = (int)cmd.ExecuteScalar(); Assert.AreEqual(100, count); }

If your pipelines write to storage instead of a DB, you could use the Azure Storage SDK to check file content or structure.

A few suggestions to keep things robust:

Use Key Vault or Azure App Config to secure your secrets in tests.

Set up seed/test data so results are predictable.

Handle timeouts and retries in case a pipeline takes longer.

You’re approaching it the right way - using C# and NUnit gives you full control and integrates cleanly with DevOps.
Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Firthouse M G 80 Reputation points

2025-05-07T06:24:38.29+00:00
@Smaran Thoomu Can you give me the Nunit code to connect to the Azure data factory via managed identity from visual studio?
Just to test connection is working.

Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

@Firthouse M G Yes, you can connect to Azure Data Factory using Managed Identity via .NET SDK in your NUnit test code, though please note that ADF itself doesn't expose a direct "test connection" method. However, you can authenticate with Azure using DefaultAzureCredential from the Azure.Identity package and confirm access by listing pipelines or triggering a test run.Here’s a sample snippet you can use to authenticate via Managed Identity from your NUnit test and list pipelines in ADF:

using NUnit.Framework;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Azure.Identity;
using Azure.ResourceManager.DataFactory;
using Azure.ResourceManager;
using Azure.Core;

namespace ADFUnitTests
{
    public class ADFConnectionTest
    {
        [Test]
        public async Task TestADFConnectionWithManagedIdentity()
        {
            // Authenticate using the Managed Identity
            var credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

            // Create the ArmClient
            var client = new ArmClient(credential);

            // Replace with your values
            string subscriptionId = "<your-subscription-id>";
            string resourceGroup = "<your-resource-group>";
            string factoryName = "<your-datafactory-name>";

            var factoryResourceId = DataFactoryResource.CreateResourceIdentifier(subscriptionId, resourceGroup, factoryName);
            var dataFactory = client.GetDataFactoryResource(factoryResourceId);

            // Try listing pipelines as a test
            var pipelines = dataFactory.GetDataFactoryPipelines().GetAllAsync();
            await foreach (var pipeline in pipelines)
            {
                TestContext.WriteLine($"Found pipeline: {pipeline.Data.Name}");
                break; // Just checking connectivity
            }

            Assert.Pass("Connection to Azure Data Factory via Managed Identity succeeded.");
        }
    }
}

Notes:

Make sure your Visual Studio is running under a user with access to Azure resources, or that your deployment agent has the correct Managed Identity role assignments (like Data Factory Contributor).
You’ll need NuGet packages: Azure.Identity, Azure.ResourceManager, and Azure.ResourceManager.DataFactory.

Hope this helps! If so, please consider clicking Accept Answer and marking it helpful so it benefits the wider community.

Firthouse M G 80 Reputation points

2025-05-08T05:55:40.44+00:00
@Smaran Thoomu I used the same code as above with my subscription ID , Resource group and data factory name. Even though build was successful no output was printed and not sure whether it is even connecting to ADF.

Is there aby way to check the connectivity ?

What is deployment agent yo have mentioned in the above comment?
Smaran Thoomu 24,110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-08T06:32:50.8866667+00:00

Hi Firthouse M G,

Thank you for your continued engagement!

While your follow-up question is important, it shifts the scope from unit testing strategy into broader connectivity and agent configuration, which could benefit from being addressed as a separate thread. This helps maintain clarity for others in the community who might be searching for specific topics.

To ensure your new query about validating ADF connectivity and deployment agent behavior gets the visibility and focused attention it deserves, I recommend posting it as a new question. I’ll be happy to jump in and assist there as well.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping keep the community organized and easier to navigate for everyone.

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

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Automating ADF Unit testing. How to automate the ADF pipelines unit testing. Deployment pipelines are in place.

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