Azure ELT Framework

The framework shown above is becoming a common pattern for Extract, Load & Transform (ELT) solutions in Microsoft Azure. They key services used in this framework are Azure Data Factory v2 for orchestration, Azure Data Lake Gen2 for storage and Azure Databricks for data transformation. Here are the key benefits each component offers –

1. Azure Data Factory v2 (ADF) – ADF v2 plays the role of an orchestrator, facilitating data ingestion & movement, while letting other services transform the data. This lets a service like Azure Databricks which is highly proficient at data manipulation own the transformation process while keeping the orchestration process independent. This also makes it easier to swap transformation-specific services in & out depending on requirements.
2. Azure Data Lake Gen2 (ADLS) – ADLS Gen2 provides a highly-scalable and cost-effective storage platform. Built on blob storage, ADLS offers storage suitable for big data analytics while keeping costs low. ADLS also offers granular controls for enforcing security rules.
3. Azure Databricks – Databricks is quickly becoming the de facto platform for data engineering & data science in Azure. Leveraging Apache Spark’s capabilities through Dataframe & Dataset APIs and Spark SQL for data interrogation, Spark Streaming for streaming analytics, Spark MLlib for machine learning & GraphX for graph processing, Databricks is truly living up to the promise of a Unified Analytics Platform.

The pattern makes use of Azure Data Lake Gen2 as the final landing layer, however it can be extended with different serving layers such as Azure SQL Data Warehouse if an MPP platform is needed, Azure Cosmos DB if a high-throughput NoSQL database is needed, etc.

ADF, ADLS & Azure Databricks form the core set of services in this modern ELT framework. Investment in their individual capabilities and their integration with the rest of the Azure ecosystem continues to be made. Some examples of new upcoming features include Mapping Data Flows in ADF (currently in private preview) which will let users develop ETL & ELT pipelines using a GUI-based approach and MLflow in Azure Databricks (currently in public preview) which will provide capabilities for machine-learning experiment tracking, model management & operationalisation. This makes the ELT framework sustainable and future-proof for your data platform.