AI-102 Plan and manage an Azure AI solution Practice Question
Your company uses Azure AI Search to power a customer-facing product catalog search. The search index contains product data from Azure SQL Database. The indexer runs daily. Lately, users complain that new products appear in the catalog with a delay of up to 24 hours. The business requires near real-time indexing (within minutes) for new products. You have the following constraints: - The indexer must continue to run daily for full sync. - You need to minimize changes to the existing architecture. - You cannot use Azure Functions or Logic Apps due to cost. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse SQL Server change tracking (a database-level feature) with Azure AI Search's change detection policies, leading them to select Option B without realizing that the indexer requires a specific policy configuration (like high-water mark or integrated change tracking) and that simply enabling change tracking on the database does not automatically integrate with the indexer.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Add a high-water mark change detection policy (e.g., based on a LastModified column) to the indexer data source. Set the indexer to run every 5 minutes.
It uses a high-water mark change detection policy (e.g., based on a LastModified column) to identify only new or updated records since the last indexer run. By setting the indexer to run every 5 minutes, you achieve near real-time indexing without changing the existing architecture or incurring additional costs from Azure Functions or Logic Apps. The daily full sync continues to run as scheduled, ensuring consistency.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Add a high-water mark change detection policy (e.g., based on a LastModified column) to the indexer data source. Set the indexer to run every 5 minutes.
Why this is correct
This enables incremental indexing with minimal changes, achieving near real-time updates.
- ✗
Enable change tracking on the Azure SQL Database and configure the indexer to use it.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling change tracking on Azure SQL Database allows the indexer to detect only new or modified rows, but the indexer itself still runs on a scheduled interval—by default, every 24 hours. This does not reduce the delay to minutes because the indexer’s execution frequency remains unchanged. It is tempting because change tracking is designed to avoid full reindexes and is the correct choice when the goal is incremental indexing within the existing scheduler, not when the requirement is sub-hourly refresh without introducing a separate compute trigger.
- ✗
Modify the application to use the push API to upload new products to the index as they are added.
Why it's wrong here
Push API requires code changes and may increase costs; also contradicts minimizing changes.
- ✗
Remove the daily indexer schedule and instead trigger the indexer manually after each new product insertion.
Why it's wrong here
Manual triggering is not automated and doesn't meet near real-time requirement consistently.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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