Why Not Use Azure Data Factory AND Logic Apps?

If you’re just starting out with Azure, you may wonder whether you should use Azure Data Factory or Azure Logic Apps when doing a data integration project in Azure. We get this question a lot. My question is, why not use both? They both have use cases where one may be better than the other but it’s no longer a question of either/or.

Here are my thoughts about how there’s room for both:

• Azure Data Factory is better designed for retrieving data sets from cloud sources like databases or an online app like Salesforce that has direct integration with Data Factory, as well as something that provides larger data sets that can be loaded into a table or a flat file, for example.
• Logics Apps would be better compared to Azure Data Factory with other data sources, like when you need to reference a REST API, for instance.

We’ve worked on many projects recently where we’ve got a lot of data coming from set-base sources where Data Factory is a logical fit, but we also have other data that we need to access an application via a REST API and Logic Apps works better in that case. So, in this situation, it’s not a matter of choosing one vs the other but we use an approach using both.

As with many cloud technologies today, neither of these require any upfront costs or equipment to get started, so you don’t have to choose one over the other – as cost is not a factor, I encourage you to use both.

If you have questions about Azure Data Factory, Logic Apps or want to learn more about how you can use Azure in your business – we are the people to talk to. Click the link below or contact us—we’re here to help.