DP-900 Practice Test 40 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A mobile game company stores player profiles and game state in Azure Cosmos DB. Each document contains playerId, level, score, inventory (an array of items), and lastLogin. The application requires fast point reads by playerId, queries to find all players within a specific score range, and global distribution with multi-region writes for low latency worldwide. They also want to use a familiar SQL-like query language. Which Azure Cosmos DB API should they choose?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Core (SQL) API. The Core (SQL) API is the correct choice because it provides native support for SQL-like queries, enabling the required point reads by playerId and range queries on score. It also offers multi-region writes for global distribution with low latency, which aligns with the application's need for worldwide player access. The document model with arrays (inventory) is directly supported, making it ideal for storing player profiles and game state.

Answer

MongoDB API

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Cassandra API

Answer

Gremlin API

Question 2

A company has an Azure SQL Database with an 'Orders' table containing millions of rows. The table has a clustered index on OrderID (primary key). Queries frequently filter by CustomerID (equality) and OrderDate (range). These queries are slow and cause high logical reads. Which index strategy will most improve performance for these specific queries?

Accepted Answer

Create a non-clustered index on (CustomerID, OrderDate).. A non-clustered index on (CustomerID, OrderDate) is a covering index for queries filtering by CustomerID (equality) and OrderDate (range). It allows SQL Server to perform an index seek on CustomerID, then a range scan on OrderDate, retrieving all needed columns without touching the clustered index (if the query is covered). This dramatically reduces logical reads compared to a full clustered index scan or a key lookup.

Answer

Rebuild the clustered index on (OrderDate, CustomerID).

Answer

Create a non-clustered index on OrderDate.

Answer

Create a filtered index on OrderDate for recent dates.

Question 3

A healthcare organization needs to store patient records that must be immutable and cannot be modified or deleted for 7 years due to regulatory compliance. Which Azure feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage immutable storage. Azure Blob Storage immutable storage is correct because it provides WORM (Write Once, Read Many) capabilities that prevent data from being modified or deleted for a specified retention period. This directly meets the regulatory requirement for patient records to remain immutable for 7 years, as the policy is enforced at the storage level and cannot be overridden by any user, including administrators.

Answer

Microsoft Purview

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Azure Policy

Answer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Question 4

A company uses Azure SQL Database for its e-commerce platform. The reporting team runs complex, long-running queries that join multiple tables and would degrade performance of the transactional workload if executed on the primary database. Which Azure SQL Database feature should the company enable to isolate the reporting queries while ensuring read-only access to the most current data?

Accepted Answer

Read scale-out (read-only replicas). Read scale-out (read-only replicas) allows you to offload reporting queries to a read-only replica of the Azure SQL Database, ensuring that complex, long-running queries do not degrade the performance of the primary transactional workload. The replica provides access to the most current data because it uses snapshot isolation and is transactionally consistent with the primary database.

Answer

Automatic tuning

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Geo-replication

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Elastic query

Question 5

You are designing a data storage solution for a social media application that stores user profile pictures and uploaded photos. The solution must support high throughput and be optimized for reading and writing large binary objects. Which Azure data service should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage. Azure Blob Storage is optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as images and videos, and provides high throughput for read/write operations, making it ideal for user profile pictures and uploaded photos. Azure Files (A) is a managed file share for SMB/NFS, not optimized for high-throughput binary object operations. Azure SQL Database (C) is a relational database for structured data, not designed for large binary objects. Azure Cosmos DB (D) is a NoSQL database primarily for structured or semi-structured data, not for storing large blobs efficiently.

Answer

Azure Files

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Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Question 6

You need to store JSON documents for a web application that requires low-latency reads and writes globally. The data has no fixed schema. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database that natively supports JSON documents with low-latency reads and writes. Option A is wrong because Azure Table Storage is a key-value store, not ideal for complex JSON queries. Option B is wrong because Azure Blob Storage is not optimized for low-latency document queries. Option C is wrong because Azure SQL Database is relational and requires a fixed schema.

Answer

Azure Table Storage

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Azure Blob Storage

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Azure SQL Database

Question 7

A company receives daily sales data from multiple retail stores as CSV files that are uploaded to Azure Blob Storage. The data must be cleansed, validated, and aggregated before being loaded into Azure Synapse Analytics for reporting. The transformations involve complex business logic and must run reliably every night. The company wants a service that can orchestrate and execute the entire pipeline with minimal development effort. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Factory with mapping data flows. Azure Data Factory with mapping data flows is correct because it provides a code-free, visual interface for building complex data transformations (cleansing, validation, aggregation) that can be orchestrated on a schedule. Mapping data flows execute at scale on Azure Databricks clusters without requiring manual Spark code, making it ideal for nightly batch ETL pipelines with minimal development effort.

Answer

Azure Stream Analytics

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Azure Databricks

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Azure Logic Apps

Question 8

A manufacturing company needs to build an analytics solution for IoT sensor data. Thousands of devices send real-time temperature and vibration readings. The solution must: (1) ingest the streaming data reliably, (2) perform real-time aggregations (e.g., average temperature per device every minute), and (3) store the aggregated results in Azure Synapse Analytics for historical reporting and dashboards. Which combination of Azure services should be used?

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs -> Azure Stream Analytics -> Azure Synapse Analytics. Azure Event Hubs is designed for high-throughput, reliable ingestion of streaming data from millions of IoT devices. Azure Stream Analytics can then perform real-time aggregations (like average temperature per device per minute) using a SQL-like query language. Finally, Azure Synapse Analytics provides a dedicated SQL pool or serverless SQL endpoint for storing and querying the aggregated results, enabling historical reporting and dashboards.

Answer

Azure IoT Hub -> Azure Data Factory -> Azure Cosmos DB

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Azure Blob Storage -> Azure Databricks -> Azure SQL Database

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Azure Service Bus -> Azure Functions -> Azure Table Storage

Question 9

Which TWO are valid access tiers for Azure Blob Storage? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Cool. Hot, Cool, and Archive are the three access tiers. Premium is a performance tier, not an access tier. Cold is not a standard tier.

Answer

Premium

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Cold

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Frozen

Question 10

You need to store telemetry data from millions of devices. Each record includes a device ID, timestamp, and metric value. The data will be queried by device ID and time range. Which Azure data store is best suited for this scenario?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Explorer. Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is optimized for time-series data and can ingest high volumes of telemetry, with fast queries on time ranges and device IDs. Azure Cosmos DB is good for real-time apps but less efficient for large-scale time-series analytics. Azure SQL Database is relational and may not scale as well. Azure Storage Queues are for messaging, not storage/query.

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Storage Queues

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Question 11

You need to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Managed Instance with minimal downtime. Which tool should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Database Migration Service (DMS). The correct tool for migrating an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Managed Instance with minimal downtime is Azure Database Migration Service (DMS). DMS supports online migrations with minimal downtime. Option A (Azure Data Factory) is primarily for data integration and orchestration, not optimized for online database migrations. Option B (SSIS) is an ETL tool, not designed for minimal downtime migration. Option C (BACPAC export/import) is an offline method that involves exporting the database to a .bacpac file and then importing, which requires downtime. Therefore, option D is correct.

Answer

Azure Data Factory

Answer

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Answer

BACPAC export and import

Question 12

You have an Azure Blob Storage container configured with the JSON snippet shown in the exhibit. What does the 'publicAccess' setting of 'Blob' allow?

Accepted Answer

Anonymous users can read blobs if they know the blob URL. The 'Blob' level of public access allows anonymous read access to blobs only; container metadata is not accessible. 'Container' level would allow anonymous listing of blobs. 'None' disables public access. 'Storage' is not a valid value.

Answer

Anonymous users can write blobs

Answer

No anonymous access is allowed

Answer

Anonymous users can list blobs in the container

Question 13

Which TWO Azure services are designed for big data batch processing?

Accepted Answer

Azure Databricks. Azure Databricks is correct because it provides an Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for batch processing large datasets, enabling ETL, data transformation, and machine learning at scale. It uses distributed computing to process data in parallel across clusters, making it ideal for big data batch workloads.

Azure HDInsight is also correct as it is a managed, full-spectrum, open-source analytics service for enterprises. It allows you to run popular open-source frameworks like Hadoop (for MapReduce batch processing), Spark (for batch and interactive processing), Hive, and others on Azure, making it suitable for big data batch processing scenarios.

Answer

Azure Data Explorer

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Azure Stream Analytics

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Azure Analysis Services

Question 14

A social media application stores user posts in Azure Cosmos DB using the NoSQL API. Each document includes: PostID (unique), UserID, Timestamp, Content. The most common query is: 'Get all posts for a specific UserID, sorted by Timestamp descending.' Which partition key should be chosen to distribute load evenly across physical partitions while also supporting this query efficiently?

Accepted Answer

UserID. UserID is the correct partition key because it evenly distributes write operations across physical partitions (each user has a unique ID) and directly supports the most common query: filtering by UserID. With UserID as the partition key, the query 'Get all posts for a specific UserID, sorted by Timestamp descending' becomes a single-partition query (using the partition key in the WHERE clause), which is efficient and avoids cross-partition fan-out. This design also allows Cosmos DB to use the Timestamp field as a sort key within each logical partition, enabling efficient sorting without additional indexing overhead.

Answer

PostID

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Timestamp

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Content

Question 15

Which THREE of the following are valid considerations when choosing between Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a big data analytics workload?

Accepted Answer

ADLS Gen2 can be optimized for high-throughput analytics workloads. ADLS Gen2 supports a hierarchical namespace, POSIX-like permissions, and is cost-effective for both hot and cool tiers. Blob Storage lacks hierarchical namespace by default. Both support lifecycle management. ADLS Gen2 can be used with Blob APIs but also has additional features.

Answer

Blob Storage provides POSIX-compliant access control lists (ACLs)

Answer

ADLS Gen2 cannot use Blob Storage APIs