Azure Data Factory ForEach Loop Fails Despite Inner Activity Error Handling - Seeking Best Practices
Hello Azure Data Factory Community, I'm encountering a persistent issue with my ADF pipeline where a ForEach loop is failing, even though I've implemented error handling for the inner activities. I'm looking for insights and best practices on how to prevent internal activity failures from propagating up and causing the entire ForEach loop (and subsequently the pipeline) to fail, while still logging all outcomes. My Setup: My pipeline processes records using a ForEach loop. Inside the loop, I have a Web activity (Sample_put_record) that calls an external API. This API call can either succeed or fail for individual records. My current error handling within the ForEach iteration is structured as follows: 1.Sample_put_record (Web Activity): Makes the API call. 2.Conditional Logic: I've tried two main approaches: •Approach A (Direct Success/Failure Paths): The Sample_put_record activity has a green arrow (on success) leading to a Log Success Items (Script activity) and a red arrow (on failure) leading to a Log Failed Items (Script activity). Both logging activities are followed by Wait activities (Dummy Wait For Success/Failure). •Approach B (If Condition Wrapper): I've wrapped the Sample_put_record activity and its success/failure logging within an If Condition activity. The If Condition's expression is @equals(activity('Sample_put_record').status, 'Succeeded'). The True branch contains the success logging, and the False branch contains the failure logging. The intention here was for the If Condition to always report success, regardless of the Sample_put_record outcome, to prevent the ForEach from failing. The Problem: Despite these error handling attempts, the ForEach loop (and thus the overall pipeline) still fails when an Sample_put_record activity fails. The error message I typically see for the ForEach activity is "Activity failed because an inner activity failed." When using the If Condition wrapper, the If Condition itself sometimes fails with the same error, indicating that an activity within its True or False branch is still causing a hard failure. For example, a common failure for Sample_put_record is: "valid":false,"message":"WARNING: There was no xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx scheduled..." (a user configuration/data issue). Even when my Log Failed Items script attempts to capture this, the ForEach still breaks. What I've Ensured/Considered: •Wait Activity Configuration: Wait activities are configured with reasonable durations and do not appear to be the direct cause of failure. •No Unhandled Exceptions: I'm trying to ensure no unhandled exceptions are propagating from my error handling activities. •Pipeline Status Goal: My ultimate goal is for the overall pipeline status to be Succeeded as long as the pipeline completes its execution, even if some Sample_put_record calls fail and are logged. I need to rely on the logs to identify actual failures, not the pipeline status. My Questions to the Community: 1.What is the definitive best practice in Azure Data Factory to ensure a ForEach loop never fails due to an inner activity failure, assuming the inner activity's failure is properly logged and handled within that iteration? 2.Are there specific nuances or common pitfalls with If Condition activities or Script activities within ForEach loops that could still cause failure propagation, even with try-catch and success exits? 3.How do you typically structure your ADF pipelines to achieve this level of resilience where internal failures are logged but don't impact the overall pipeline success status? 4.Are there any specific configurations on the ForEach activity itself (e.g., Continue on error setting, if it exists for ForEach?) or other activities that I might be overlooking? Any detailed examples, architectural patterns, or debugging tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!