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Data & Analytics · Intermediate

High-Water Mark (Incremental Load)

The last processed value of a monotonically increasing column, such as a modified timestamp or ID, stored to drive the next incremental extract.

Definition

Each run selects rows where the column exceeds the saved high-water mark and then updates it. Azure Data Factory and Fabric pipelines often implement this with a Lookup activity, a Copy activity and a stored watermark.

Example

WHERE LastModified > @last_watermark

Exam tip

High-water marks miss hard deletes and depend on reliable update timestamps.

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