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Chanti's avatar
Chanti
Frequent Visitor
3 years ago
Solved

Datamarts vs Dataflows Differences and advantages

So far I have been working with dataflows with pro and recently got access to premium capacity where datamarts are available. Are there any benefits to using datamarts vs dataflows? With datamarts ...
  • Greg_Deckler's avatar
    3 years ago

    Chanti It's perhaps not the greatest question. Datamarts leverage dataflows technology essentially to import data into an Azure SQL Server. The datamart then also automatically builds and links a dataset. You can then actually create dataflows that connect to the datamart and these can be used for DirectQuery or import if you enable the Advanced Compute Engine. 

     

    Anyway, the main difference between a datamart and a dataflow really is where the data ends up getting persisted. In a straight-up dataflow, the data from the source systems get persisted in Azure Data Lake Gen 2 storage. Conversely in a datamart, the data gets persisted in an Azure SQL Server. I have some videos on this: