If you’ve been using Azure Data Factory for a while, you might have hit some

limitations that don’t exist in tools like SSIS or Databricks. Knowing these
limitations up front can help you design better pipelines, so I’m listing a few
here of which you’ll want to be aware.

1. You cannot nest For Each activities.

Within a pipeline, you cannot place a For Each activity inside of
another For Each activity. If you need to iterate through two datasets
you have two main options. You can combine the two datasets
before you iterate over them. Or you can use a parent/child pipeline
design where you move the inner For Each activity into the child
pipeline. Fun fact: currently the Data Factory UI won’t stop you from
nesting For Each activities. You won’t find out until you try to
execute the pipeline.
2. You cannot put a For Each activity or Switch activity inside of an
If activity.
The Data Factory UI will prevent you from doing this by removing
the For Each and Switch from the activity list. You can redesign the
pipeline to put the inner activity inside a child pipeline. Also note
that you can put an If activity inside of a For Each activity.
3. You cannot use a Set Variable activity inside a For Each activity
that runs in parallel.
The Data Factory UI won’t stop you, but you’ll quickly learn that the
scope of the variable is the pipeline and not the For Each or any
other activity. So you’ll just overwrite the value in no particular
order as the activities execute in parallel. The workaround for this is
specific to your use case. You might try using an existing attribute of
the item you are iterating on instead of setting a variable. Append
Variable works fine, since each loop could add a value. But again,
don’t count on the order being meaningful.
4. You cannot nest If activities.
The Data Factory UI will prevent you from nesting the If activities. If
you need to have two sets of conditions, you can either combine
conditions or move the inner condition to a child pipeline.
5. You cannot nest Switch activities.
Similar to the If activity, the Data Factory UI will prevent you from
nesting Switch activities. And again, you can either combine
conditions or move the inner condition to a child pipeline.
6. You cannot put a For Each or If activity inside a Switch activity.
The Data Factory UI will prevent you from doing this. You can move
the inner activity to a child pipeline if needed.
7. You cannot use an expression to populate the pipeline in an
Execute Pipeline activity.
 It would be great to design a truly dynamic pipeline where you could
have a dataset that defines which pipelines to execute, but you can’t
do that natively in the Data Factory UI. The Invoked Pipeline
property doesn’t allow dynamic expressions. If you need to
dynamically execute pipelines, you can use Logic Apps or Azure
Functions to execute the pipeline.
8. You cannot dynamically populate the variable name in Set
Variable and Append Variable activities.
The Data Factory UI only allows you to choose from a list of existing
variables. As a workaround, you could use an If activity to determine
which variable you will populate.
9. The Lookup activity has a maximum of 5,000 rows and a
maximum size of 4 MB.
If you need to iterate over more than 5000 rows, you’ll need to split
your list between a child and parent pipeline.