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I am learning azure data factory and would really like to do its development in Visual studio environment. I have VS 2019 installed on my machine and I don't see an option to develop ADF in it.

Is there any version of VS that ADF can be developed in or we are right now stuck with developing it in web UI for the time?

I know BI development tools needed additional plug in to VS environment to work. Does ADF need something similar to that too.

If not, how can we back up our work done in web ADF. Is there an option to link it somehow with the azure repo or GIT?

Sarah
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  • There *was* an add-in for VS to develop ADF but it has not been maintained and main way to design pipelines is via the browser. It has built-in integration with Azure DevOps. – wBob May 06 '21 at 20:12

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Starting with ADF V2, development is really intended to be done completely in the web interface. I had the same question as you at the time, but now the web tools are quite good and I don't give it a second thought. While I'm sure there are other options for developing and deploying the ARM templates, do yourself a favor and use the web UI.

By default, Data Factory only saves code changes on "Publish". An optional configuration allows source control via Git integration. You can use either either Azure DevOps or Github. I highly recommend this approach, even if you only ever work in the main branch (fine for lone developers, a bad idea for collaboration). In this case, Publish takes the current state of the main branch and surfaces your artifacts to the ADF service. That means you will still need to Publish for your changes to be live.

NOTE: Git integration is also supported in Azure Synapse, where it has tremendous value for collaboration across a wide variety of artifact types.

Joel Cochran
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  • Thanks for the answer. Good answer. Though it is an upsetting news. – Joey.Lu Jul 16 '21 at 17:47
  • Here's a more recent post where I discuss publish and source control in Synapse: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69904715/azure-synapse-workspace-where-the-scripts-are-published/69905368#69905368 – Joel Cochran Apr 25 '22 at 13:23