Extraction options, medallion transformation, and DMF load design
The full technical pipeline from Business Central source to D365 target — extraction routes for BC online (APIs, Azure Data Lake export, admin-centre database export) versus on-premises (controlled SQL), the Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion engine, canonical modelling, and the DMF load design including composite entities, recurring data jobs, batch sizing, and throttling. Includes a worked lineage for a customer record from BC table through canonical to D365 entity.
What you will be able to do
Select the appropriate extraction route for a given Business Central deployment model
Explain what each tier resolves and what it passes to the next
Design a DMF load package with correct entity ordering, composite grouping, batch sizing, and throttling
Trace a worked lineage for a customer record from BC source through canonical to D365 entity
Introduction
The previous chapter established the programme shape and the eight canonical waves. This module covers the technical engine that moves data from Business Central into D365 — the extraction routes available for each deployment model, the Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion transformation, the canonical modelling decisions made in Silver, and the…
Extraction routes by deployment model
Business Central exists in three deployment modes, each offering different extraction options:
The medallion transformation engine
Idempotent — same input yields the same result; reruns are safe Resumable — every wave checkpoints; failure restarts from checkpoint, not from scratch Observable — every row carries a run identifier, wave ID, source table, and target entity Reconcilable — every tier emits control totals;
DMF load design
Each wave maps to one or more DMF data projects. Within a wave, entities are ordered by dependency:
Worked lineage: customer record
Silver resolutions applied: Company "Contoso UK Ltd" → legal entity "GBCO" (from company decision matrix) Party identity resolved by tax registration match → shared party PARTY-00234 Customer Posting Group "DOMESTIC" → posting profile "GEN" (from posting crosswalk) Gen. Bus.
Operational hardening controls
[!WARNING] Dry-run mode should be executed at least once per wave before the wave runs live. It exercises the entire pipeline — extraction fixture, Bronze, Silver, Gold, reconciliation — without submitting to DMF. A dry run that produces reconciliation failures prevents those failures from consuming cutover-window time.
Knowledge check
Summary
The migration engine moves Business Central data through a governed pipeline: extraction (APIs, Data Lake export, database export, or SQL), Bronze (immutable source snapshots), Silver (resolved identities and expanded dimensions), Gold (DMF-entity-shaped payloads), and DMF load (data projects with dependency ordering, batch sizing, and…