DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Test 17 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You design a data solution for an e-commerce platform. Transactional data must be stored with ACID compliance for order processing, while clickstream data from the website will be used for analytics. Which combination of Azure data services best meets these needs?

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

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database for transactions; Azure Synapse Analytics for analytics. Azure SQL Database provides full ACID compliance for transactional workloads like order processing, ensuring data integrity. Azure Synapse Analytics is optimized for large-scale analytics on clickstream data, offering massively parallel processing (MPP) and integration with data lakes. This combination separates OLTP and OLAP workloads efficiently.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB for transactions; Azure SQL Database for analytics

Answer

Azure Blob Storage for transactions; Azure Data Lake Storage for analytics

Answer

Azure Database for MySQL for transactions; Azure Analysis Services for analytics

Question 2

Refer to the exhibit. You are configuring a custom role in Azure RBAC for a team that needs to read and list blobs in a storage account. The JSON snippet shows the permissions assigned. After assigning this role to a user, they report they cannot see the storage account in the Azure portal. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The role does not include read permission on the storage account resource.. The custom role definition only includes dataActions for reading and listing blobs, but lacks any actions that grant read permission on the storage account resource itself. In Azure RBAC, viewing a storage account in the Azure portal requires the 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/read' action at the resource scope. Without this, the user cannot see the storage account in the portal, even though they can interact with blobs via APIs or tools that bypass the portal.

Answer

The dataActions should be actions instead of dataActions.

Answer

The role is not assigned at the subscription scope.

Answer

The user needs the Contributor role to view the storage account.

Question 3

A data analyst needs to visualize sales data from Azure SQL Database in real-time dashboards. Which tool should they use to create interactive reports?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft Power BI. Microsoft Power BI is the correct tool because it is designed specifically for creating interactive, real-time dashboards and reports from various data sources, including Azure SQL Database. It supports live connections and DirectQuery to enable near-real-time visualization without requiring data movement.

Answer

Azure Data Studio

Answer

Azure Synapse Analytics

Answer

Microsoft Excel

Question 4

Your company stores customer data in Azure Blob Storage. To comply with data residency regulations, you must ensure data is replicated within the same Azure region. Which replication option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Locally-redundant storage (LRS). Locally-redundant storage (LRS) replicates data three times within a single physical location in the same Azure region, ensuring data residency compliance by never copying data outside that region. This is the only option that guarantees all replicas stay within one region without any cross-region or cross-zone replication.

Answer

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)

Answer

Geo-redundant storage (GRS)

Answer

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

Question 5

A company needs to store JSON documents that require flexible schema and low-latency access globally. Which Azure data service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is the correct choice because it is a globally distributed, multi-model database service that natively supports JSON documents with flexible schema. It offers turnkey global distribution, single-digit-millisecond latency at the 99th percentile, and multiple consistency models, making it ideal for low-latency access worldwide.

Answer

Azure Table Storage

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Question 6

Your organization uses Microsoft Fabric to build a data lakehouse. Data engineers need to transform data using Spark and store results in Delta Lake format. Which Fabric component should they use?

Accepted Answer

Notebooks. Notebooks in Microsoft Fabric provide an interactive environment for writing and executing Spark code, which is required for transforming data using Spark. The results can be directly written to Delta Lake format, making Notebooks the correct component for this task.

Answer

Dataflows Gen2

Answer

Pipelines

Answer

Semantic models

Question 7

Which TWO Azure services can be used to perform real-time data ingestion and processing? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs. Azure Event Hubs (B) is correct because it is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service designed to receive millions of events per second from sources such as applications, IoT devices, and logs, buffering them for downstream stream processing. Azure Stream Analytics (E) is correct because it is a real-time stream processing engine that ingests data from sources like Event Hubs or IoT Hub and runs continuous SQL-like queries over the data to produce immediate insights, making it a core service for real-time processing. Azure SQL Database (A) is a relational database service intended for transactional storage and querying, not real-time event ingestion or stream processing. Azure Blob Storage (C) is scalable object storage for batch and archival data rather than a real-time ingestion/processing engine. Azure Data Factory (D) is a data integration and orchestration service primarily used for scheduled or triggered batch data movement and transformation, not real-time stream processing.

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Answer

Azure Data Factory

Question 8

Which THREE data storage considerations are important when choosing between Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

ACID transaction support. ACID transaction support (A) is a key consideration because Azure SQL Database provides full ACID transactions across relational data, while Azure Cosmos DB offers ACID transactions scoped to a logical partition, so the required transaction scope directly influences the choice. Global distribution capabilities (B) matter because Cosmos DB is designed for turnkey multi-region writes and reads with tunable consistency levels, whereas Azure SQL Database uses geo-replication and failover groups with a more limited consistency model. Schema flexibility (C) is important because Cosmos DB is schema-agnostic and stores JSON documents without predefined schemas, while Azure SQL Database enforces a fixed relational schema with tables, columns, and data types. Maximum storage capacity (D) is not a primary differentiator since both services scale to very large datasets and storage limits are configuration-dependent rather than architectural decision points. Built-in analytics features (E) are also not a core selection criterion because analytics in both platforms typically rely on external services such as Azure Synapse Analytics or Synapse Link rather than being a defining storage characteristic.

Answer

Maximum storage capacity

Answer

Built-in analytics features

Question 9

Which TWO Azure data services are classified as NoSQL databases? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB (B) is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model NoSQL database service, supporting APIs such as Core (SQL), MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, and Table, which makes it a canonical NoSQL offering. Azure Table Storage (C) is a key-attribute (key-value) NoSQL store for semi-structured data, exposing entities via PartitionKey/RowKey without a fixed relational schema. By contrast, Azure SQL Managed Instance (A) and Azure SQL Database (E) are relational PaaS engines built on the SQL Server engine using T-SQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL (D) is a relational open-source engine, so all three are relational (SQL) rather than NoSQL databases.

Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Answer

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Question 10

You are a data architect at a global retail company. The company has an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores petabytes of clickstream data. They need to provide near real-time analytics dashboards for regional managers. The data arrives in batches every 5 minutes. Currently, they use Azure Databricks to transform the data and load it into Azure Synapse Analytics, but the dashboards show data that is 30 minutes old. The business requires dashboards to reflect data within 10 minutes of ingestion. You propose a new solution. Which approach should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Ingest data into Azure Event Hubs, use Azure Stream Analytics to process and output to Power BI for real-time dashboards.. It uses Azure Event Hubs for low-latency ingestion and Azure Stream Analytics for real-time processing, enabling near real-time dashboards in Power BI with sub-minute latency. This architecture bypasses the batch-oriented pipeline that causes the current 30-minute delay, meeting the 10-minute requirement.

Answer

Keep current pipeline but replace Synapse with Azure Analysis Services for faster query performance.

Answer

Use Azure Data Factory with tumbling window triggers every 5 minutes to load data from Data Lake to Synapse.

Answer

Increase the number of Databricks clusters and use Auto Loader to speed up transformations.

Question 11

Your organization is migrating on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure. The databases include a mission-critical OLTP system that requires high availability with automatic failover and a reporting database that is used for read-only queries. You need to choose the appropriate Azure SQL deployment options for each workload. The OLTP system must have a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 30 seconds. The reporting database should be cost-effective and can tolerate up to 5 minutes of data loss. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure SQL Database Managed Instance with a failover group for OLTP, and use a read-only replica of the Managed Instance for reporting.. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance supports failover groups that provide automatic failover across regions with an RPO of less than 5 seconds and an RTO of less than 30 seconds, meeting the OLTP requirements. The read-only replica of the Managed Instance can be used for reporting queries without impacting the primary OLTP workload, and it is cost-effective as it does not require a separate database instance.

Answer

Use SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines with Always On Availability Groups for both workloads.

Answer

Use Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for OLTP and Azure SQL Database serverless for reporting.

Answer

Use Azure SQL Database single database with active geo-replication for both workloads.

Question 12

A small business wants to use Azure to store and analyze customer feedback from surveys. The surveys are collected via a web app and stored as JSON files. The business needs to run SQL-based queries on the data and generate reports in Power BI. They have a limited budget and prefer a serverless option to minimize management overhead. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool. Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool is the correct choice because it allows you to query JSON files directly from Azure Data Lake Storage or Blob Storage using standard T-SQL, without provisioning any infrastructure. It is serverless (pay-per-query), supports SQL-based queries, and integrates seamlessly with Power BI for reporting, making it ideal for a small business with a limited budget and minimal management overhead.

Answer

Azure Analysis Services

Answer

Azure Databricks

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Question 13

Your company stores IoT sensor data in Azure Blob Storage. Data analysts need to query the data using SQL without moving it. Which Azure service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Synapse Serverless SQL. Azure Synapse Serverless SQL is the correct choice because it provides a SQL-based query engine that can directly query data stored in Azure Blob Storage using T-SQL, without requiring data movement or a dedicated data warehouse. It uses a pay-per-query model and supports reading various file formats like Parquet, CSV, and JSON, making it ideal for ad-hoc analytical queries on IoT sensor data.

Answer

Azure Stream Analytics

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Question 14

A retail company uses Azure SQL Database to store transactional data. They need to ensure that reporting queries do not impact the performance of the transactional workload. Which solution should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure a read replica in Azure SQL Database. A read replica in Azure SQL Database allows reporting queries to be offloaded to a read-only copy of the database, isolating them from the primary transactional workload. This ensures that reporting activities do not consume resources (CPU, IO, memory) on the primary instance, preventing performance degradation for transactional operations.

Answer

Increase the DTU or vCore limit of the database

Answer

Add indexes to the reporting tables

Answer

Partition the largest tables by date

Question 15

You need to store semi-structured JSON documents from a web application in Azure. The data will be accessed by a key/value lookup. Which Azure data store should you use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is the correct choice because it natively supports semi-structured JSON documents and provides key/value lookup via its partition key mechanism. It offers single-digit millisecond latency for point reads, making it ideal for web application data that needs fast, scalable access by a unique key.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Answer

Azure Table Storage

Answer

Azure SQL Database