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1.3.2. Choosing Services by Lifecycle Stage
💡 First Principle: Match the service to the stage. Don't use processing tools for storage or storage tools for visualization. Each service excels at one stage.
Reasoning Tool: When a question asks about "moving data from Oracle to Azure"—that's INGEST (Data Factory). When it asks about "storing raw files"—that's STORE (Data Lake). When it asks about "running complex queries"—that's PROCESS (Synapse). When it asks about "dashboards for executives"—that's SERVE (Power BI).
| If the question mentions... | Stage | Look for... |
|---|---|---|
| "Pipeline," "move data," "ETL" | Ingest | Data Factory |
| "Streaming events," "millions per second" | Ingest | Event Hubs |
| "Raw files," "data lake," "archive" | Store | Data Lake Gen2, Blob Storage |
| "Relational," "transactions," "ACID" | Store | SQL Database, Cosmos DB |
| "Transform," "query," "analytics" | Process | Synapse, Databricks |
| "Real-time analysis" | Process | Stream Analytics |
| "Reports," "dashboards," "visualize" | Serve | Power BI |
Written byAlvin Varughese
Founder•15 professional certifications